NATIONAL

Allen announces FMA support
Lawmakers take sides as Senate vote looms on the Federal Marriage Amendment

JOE CREA
Friday, July 02, 2004

With an expected Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment less than two weeks away, Virginia Republican George Allen has announced he plans to support the measure, ending several months of indecision over the matter.

In April, Allen said he would only support the FMA, which would ban same-sex marriage, as a “last resort.” But he told the Associated Press last week that federal law was unlikely to protect the traditional definition of marriage based on research and legal developments.

“Unfortunately, the last resort of amending the Constitution will be necessary to effectuate that goal,” Allen said.

He expressed his concern that judges “will be making these decisions and obviating, negating the will of the people in the states.”

Allen has long opposed marriage rights for gay couples. But he did not initially join GOP colleagues sponsoring the FMA and earlier this year said that the Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, was sufficient in protecting marriage.

Some say that Allen, who was undecided on the amendment for months, was likely feeling pressure from conservative colleagues and lobby groups for casting a favorable vote in June to add “sexual orientation” as a protected category to the federal hate crime law.

“We met with him and urged him not to let that political heat push him into a position where he felt he had to support some version of this amendment, but I think that is the reason why he supported it,” said David Lampo, president of the Virginia Log Cabin Republicans, a gay partisan group. “He is, however, worried about his religious-based supporters and he is responding in a way that we don’t support.”

GOP leaders in Congress have indicated they will schedule a vote on the FMA sometime during the week of July 12.

Sen. John Warner (R), the other senator from Virginia, remains undecided about the FMA. John Ullyot, a spokesperson for Warner, said that while the senator believes marriage should remain the union of one man and one woman, he “thinks Congress must proceed with great caution anytime it considers amending the Constitution.”

Lampo said that after a meeting with Warner, “he seems to be genuinely undecided” on the issue.

In Maryland, Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Mikulksi, who has a generally pro-gay voting record, has not issued a position on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and her office did not respond to repeated Blade inquiries on the subject.

A spokesperson for the state’s other Senate Democrat, Paul S. Sarbanes, said the senator will oppose the FMA.

Equality Maryland, a gay rights group, is asking its members to contact Mikulski and Sarbanes to urge them to oppose the FMA.

Combating ‘judicial supremacy’
Last week, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution heard from two social conservatives who have long opposed gay rights.

Phyllis Schafly, president of the Eagle Forum, testified in support of the FMA along with former Rep. Bill Dannemeyer (R-Calif.).

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group, noted that Schafly once said gays should not work in the food-handling business and that Dannemeyer once compared the gay rights movement to Nazi Germany.

“Featuring testimony by two long-time opponents of equality proves the argument that this is about discrimination,” said Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “Using the Constitution to deny Americans the right to marry would undermine the Constitution itself — a document meant to ensure our freedoms, not take them away.”

Citing a General Accounting Office report, Schafly said, “man-woman marital relationship is integral to the Social Security system and pervasive to our system of taxation.”

“The widespread social and familial consequences of DOMA also impact on adoption, child custody, veterans benefits and the tax-free inheritance of a spouse’s estate,” said Schafly, whose son was outed in the early ‘90s.

“We know that Congress has the unquestioned power to prevent an activist judge from doing what all your previous witnesses have predicted. … It is imperative that Congress stop federal judges from asserting judicial supremacy over our rights of self-government,” she said.

Dueling news conferences
Last week, the National Coalition of African-American Ministers held a news conference on Capitol Hill to voice its support for the FMA. Meanwhile, another news conference, sponsored by HRC and the National Black Justice Coalition, was also held on Capitol Hill and featured black clergy supportive of gay and lesbian equality.

Jasmyne Cannick, media director of the National Black Justice Coalition, said that social conservatives and evangelical Christians are pressuring African-American churches to support the FMA.

“There is definite pressure,” Cannick said. “I don’t see that African Americans would support writing discrimination into the Constitution just because of what we as a people, historically speaking, have experienced.”

Donna Payne, who serves as HRC’s senior constituency organizer and chairs the National Black Justice Coalition’s religious committee, said that African-American churches are typically very conservative, but are quiet about gay and lesbian issues.

“The nature of the church is not to talk about it,” Payne said. “There’s a shame around it. But these other churches are going further and telling them that if we receive the right to marry, then we can come to their churches and demand that they marry us.

“Some ministers are really thinking that if we get this right, black gay people are going to rush to their churches and demand marriage,” she said. “Well, that is not true.”

Pastor Vick Bolton of World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga., who attended last week’s news conference of African-American ministers who support the FMA, said black churches are not being “pre-empted or co-opted by conservatives.”

‘My opinion is that I don’t care one way or the other,’ said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, ... continued on next page 1  |  2