FIC Blog

The Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA) fell short of the two-thirds mark in the U.S. Senate today. But despite claims that polls show a pro same-sex “marriage” trend, the MPA actually got more “yes” votes than last time:

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, dealing a defeat to President Bush and Republicans who hope to use the measure to energize conservative voters on Election Day.
Supporters knew they wouldn’t achieve the two-thirds vote needed to approve a constitutional amendment, but they had predicted a majority of votes. Instead, they fell one short, 49-48.

That was one vote more than they got last time the Senate voted on the matter, in 2004. Later that year, Republicans gained four seats in the Senate.

Today’s result meets the pro-family goal stated by Brian in a Courant piece on Monday:

The clock is ticking,” said Brian S. Brown, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut. “People understand what’s at stake.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Court gave same-sex couples the right to marry in 2004, and it remains the only state where gay marriage is legal. But amendment supporters cite eight cases making their way through different courts that have the potential to legalize gay marriage elsewhere. On Wednesday, New York’s Court of Appeals heard a challenge to that state’s marriage laws, and Connecticut Superior Court Judge Patty Jenkins Pittman is expected to rule soon on a case brought by eight state couples who were denied the right to wed.
Anne Stanback, executive director of Love Makes a Family, a Hartford-based activist group that supports same-sex marriage, said the amendment debate “does not worry me. As marriage becomes legal in more and more states, support will go up.”
Brown thought the opposite. Though he does not expect to win the battle this week, he hopes to cite progress by having the proposal get the support of more than 48 senators who backed it on a procedural vote when it came up two years ago.

In the last two days the Courant has published two columns, an editorial and a cartoon against the MPA. But the arguments put forth by same-sex “marriage” proponents, including the Courant, are spurious. Senators Dodd and Lieberman, for instance, claim the MPA takes the issue away from the states. The truth, as President Bush noted on Monday, is just the opposite:

“A constitutional amendment would not take this issue away from the states, as some have argued,” Bush said. “It would take the issue away from the courts and put it directly before the American people.”

The Courant—including the first sentence of the news story that quotes Brian—has prattled on about “other issues” that are said to be more important than the supposed “diversion” of same-sex “marriage.” But they are saying this because the more people have to think about same-sex “marriage,” the less they like it. Same-sex “marriage” proponents will only win if the public isn’t paying attention.

In an op-ed on liberal reactions to the MPA, Dennis Prager has their number:

…we [pro-family citizens] are nevertheless more preoccupied with:

(1) Giving every child the opportunity to at least begin life with a mother and father; (2) Honoring the will of the great majority of Americans, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, to preserve the man-woman marital ideal, and not allow a judge to single-handedly destroy that ideal; (3) Preserving the ability of teachers and clergy to tell the story of marriage to young children in terms of a man and woman and not confuse the vast majority of kids who are forming their vision of marriage and sexuality.

These preoccupations are neither bigoted nor radical. They are, in our view, civilization-saving.

As for the liberals’ view that gas prices are more important than society’s definition of marriage, it is so self-incriminating that no response is needed.