Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to call a vote the week of July 12 on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Senate Republican sources say Frist will have trouble mustering a simple majority, much less the two-thirds needed to pass the amendment.
It appears that the Senate doesn’t seem interested in this one. So that means they must not be hearing much from their constituents in favor of passing the amendment.
Also, it looks like some senators are actively trying to pull people away from getting involved…
Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee tells TIME he has begun organizing G.O.P. moderates who oppose the amendment — and even some conservatives who object to tinkering with the Constitution — to “send a message” to Frist that it’s a losing cause.
The most telling piece of this whole story follows…
“We have so many more important issues to grapple with,” says Chafee. “This is just a distraction.”
Making sure that same-sex relationships are not defined legally as marriage is a distraction? Where are our priorities? Contrast what senator Chafee said to what Chuck Colson has said recently …
My friends, if marriage is redefined, we can expect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender propaganda promoted to every age school child, reflected across our textbooks with pictures, stories, and revisionist history. So if youre sitting out there thinking that legalizing same-sex marriage wont really affect you, think again.
If the effects of family breakdown are indisputably calamitous, why are we so intent on accelerating the breakdown? Whether its the refusal to treat two-parent families as normative in textbooks, an increasing problem, or the deconstruction of marriage inherent in the campaign for same-sex marriage, the effect is the same: The one institution that we depend on to instill the basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted is diminished. Thats because marriage, in the sense of working together as a team and making the sacrifices necessary to raise good kids, is hard work. If people are taught that its merely one lifestyle choice among many, we are more likely to opt for an easier way of living. Then it will be a case, as Morse demonstrates, of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.
That hardly sounds like a distraction to me. The ramifications of treating this issue as ‘a distraction‘ would be disastrous to the generations to come.
Chuck Colson encourages us with these final words…
I worked in the U.S. Senate between 1956 and 1960. We fought hard for civil rights billsagainst entrenched segregation. Every year the bills were blocked by filibusters. But we kept fighting year after year. So did leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. By 1964 the voting rights act was passed.
…
The Senate has, Im happy to say, scheduled debate to begin the week of July 12. Maybe there arent the votes there this year to pass a constitutional amendment, but thats no excuse not to start the fight. We need a great national debate so we can make our case. And maybe well lose this yearmaybe next year well lose again. But well come back year after yearuntil we win. Like the cause of abolition, our cause is just. And if we trust in God, I believe that during the coming public debates, the public will see this as a great defining issue. And when they do, the pressure will be on recalcitrant congressmen to come our way.
I say let the debate begin. Let us engage the battle.
Let’s contact senator Chafee and encourage him to take another look. This is too important of an issue to make a hasty, uninformed decision…
Contact Senator Chaffee here…
This entry was posted by Roger on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 8:58 pm and is filed under General.
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