Jul 23, 2004  |  By: Sen. Edward Kennedy  | COMMENTS     

Editors’ note: Of all the senators to take part in the debate this month over the Federal Marriage Amendment, only Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), defended the Massachusetts court decision on same-sex marriage and the dignity of gay couples. An excerpt from his speech on the Senate floor follows:

THIS DEBATE IS about politics — an attempt to drive a wedge between one group of citizens and the rest of the country solely for partisan advantage. We have rejected that tactic before, and we should reject it again.

In the Goodridge case, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was interpreting the Massachusetts Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution. As a rule, the federal government has no authority to tell states how to interpret their own laws and constitutions.

The federal marriage constitutional amendment would change this fundamental principle of state sovereignty by imposing a rule of interpretation on state courts. I am certainly glad it was not done at other times of American history.

The Massachusetts Constitution was written by John Adams in 1780. He wrote it virtually himself, much of it copied by the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
In 1783, the issue of slavery came before the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and Massachusetts has the only constitution of all 50 States that has been interpreted as barring slavery.

We were the first state of all the states to ban slavery, the only state that banned it in the constitution itself —Massachusetts, under John Adams, the only state, in 1783. And we had slaves in my state for 150 years before it.

So it is nice to hear our colleagues talk about Massachusetts and about our court and our judges there. I remind our colleagues, of the seven Massachusetts judges who voted, six were and are Republicans. Only one is a Democrat. Six are Republicans.

I happen to be someone who supports the court decision in Massachusetts. I am proud of them.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, a vote for the federal marriage constitutional amendment is a vote against civil unions, domestic partnerships and other efforts by states to treat gays and lesbians fairly under the law.

It is a vote against allowing states to decide these issues for themselves. It is a vote for imposing discrimination, plain and simple, on all 50 states.

Supporters of the proposed amendment claim that religious freedom is somehow under attack by states that grant the same rights and the same benefits to same-sex couples that married couples now have. …

The true threat to religious freedom is posed by the Federal Marriage Amendment itself, which would tell churches they cannot consecrate a same-sex marriage, even though some churches are now doing so.

The amendment would flagrantly interfere with the decisions of religious communities and undermine the longstanding separation of church and state in our society.

The FMA would give the federal government express authority to bar religious groups from sanctioning same-sex marriage — and the authority to punish those that do. …

TOO OFTEN THE debate over the definition of marriage and its legal incidence have ignored the very personal and loving family relationships that would be prohibited by a constitutional amendment.

More and more children across the country today have same-sex parents. What does it do to these children and their well-being when the president of the United States and the Senate Republican leadership say their parents are second-class citizens?

The decision by the Massachusetts court addressed the many rights available to married couples under the state law, including the right to be treated fairly by the state’s tax laws, to share insurance coverage, to visit loved ones in the hospitals, to receive health benefits, family leave benefits, and survivor benefits.

In fact, there are now more than a thousand federal rights and benefits based on marriage. Gay couples and their children deserve to share in all of these rights and benefits, too.

Supporters of the amendment have tried to shift the debate away from equal rights by claiming their only concern is the definition of marriage, but many supporters of the amendment are against civil union laws as well and against any other rights for gays or lesbians.

We have far better things to do in the Senate than write bigotry and prejudice into the Constitution.