American Civil Liberties Union
Oppose Writing
Intolerance into the U.S. Constitution
Spurred by Canada's recent decision to legalize gay
marriages, a coalition of right-wing religious groups
has launched a campaign to amend the U.S. Constitution to
define marriage as strictly between a man and
a woman, invalidate all state and local domestic
partnership laws and nullify civil rights protections based
on marital status. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
has advanced their goal by introducing H.J. Res 56, the "Federal Marriage Amendment."
In many states, unmarried persons --
including unmarried relatives, heterosexual couples, gay and lesbian couples and
even unrelated clergy members -- have some of the same rights as married
persons. The proposed amendment would eliminate these protections by nullifying
domestic partnership laws in several states and in more than 100 counties,
cities and towns. The proposal would also undermine state adoption, foster care
and kinship care laws. If enacted, the amendment would even prohibit state and
local governments from making their own decisions on providing benefits to their
employees.
The Federal Marriage
Amendment would wipe out every single law protecting millions of families no
matter what their sexual orientation.
Oppose the Federal
Marriage Amendment
This amendment would invalidate all
legal protections for unmarried couples -- gay or straight.
By
denying unmarried persons all legal protections for any of the "legal incidents"
of marriage, the amendment would destroy a wide range of other rights that are
important to the lives of unmarried persons. Those legal protections include
state and local civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination based on "marital
status," state laws protecting unmarried elderly couples who refrain from
marrying in order to hold on to their pensions, and even state laws allowing a
person, in the absence of a spouse, to oppose the autopsy of a close friend
because of the deceased person's religious beliefs.
Amending the Constitution is an extreme
act.
The proposed amendment would prohibit states from expanding
their civil rights laws to protect gay and lesbian couples, or unmarried
heterosexual couples, and their families. It would forbid states from
serving their traditional role as testing grounds for stronger civil rights
laws.
The Federal Marriage Amendment would
reverse the constitutional tradition of protecting, not harming, individual
freedoms.
None of the current constitutional amendments restricts
individual freedoms. In fact, the amendments to the Constitution have been the
source of most of the Constitution's protections for individual liberty rights.
The proposed amendment, by contrast, would deny all protection for the most
personal decisions made by millions of families.
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