News
2006-07-18
House to vote on
Marriage Protection Amendment
Ban on
same-sex marriage to get House vote
House Republicans
are pressing for a Tuesday vote on
Undeterred by a
decisive defeat in the Senate, House Republicans are
moving ahead with a vote on a U.S. constitutional amendment
to ban same-sex marriage, forcing lawmakers to take a
stand just months before midterm elections, the
Associated Press reports. The vote, scheduled for
Tuesday, will occur in a week devoted to several priorities
of social conservatives—what House GOP leaders
call their "American values agenda." Also on tap are a
Pledge of Allegiance–protection bill and
several Republican-backed stem cell bills.
President Bush,
under some pressure from conservatives to take a more
active role in promoting their issues, spoke out for the
Marriage Protection Amendment, as it's
called, several times before it was rejected in
the Senate last month. Changing the Constitution is
necessary, he said in one of his weekly radio addresses,
because "activist judges and some local officials have
made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage in
recent years."
Defeat of the
amendment is once again a near-certainty. The Senate fell
11 votes short of the 60 votes needed just to advance the
proposal to a yes-or-no decision. Two years ago, just
before another election, the House came up some 40
votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to
advance a constitutional amendment.
Opponents of
same-sex marriage claimed success anyway. They argue that
the 2004 vote was part of a successful campaign to rally
conservatives and help win Bush's reelection.
Proposals to ban same-sex marriage were on the ballots
of 11 states, including Ohio, where a bigger than usual
rural turnout swung the election to Bush.
"The more this
issue is discussed, the more people understand the
threat" posed by activist courts, said Tony Perkins,
president of the Family Research Council. The votes in
Congress give the majority of Americans who oppose
marriage equality a chance "to look and see if the
people in Washington represent them and stand on the same
side," he said.
Rep. Tammy
Baldwin, an openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin, said the
marriage amendment "certainly is a tool that the right wing
is using, but I think it has lost the impact it had in
2004." Baldwin said voters are more concerned about
the war in Iraq, health care costs, and gas prices and
to a greater extent "are recognizing this time that
these measures are politically motivated."
"We're heading
into an election where the Republicans are in deep
trouble," said Joe Solmonese, president of the gay rights
group Human Rights Campaign. "The outcome is not
really a significant factor in all of this," he said
of the House vote. "It's a move to appease a rapidly
dwindling base." (AP)
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