FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcacluorg
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union
today expressed its disappointment as the Senate Judiciary
Committee, meeting in a tiny room
behind the Senate floor, approved a measure to amend the Constitution to deny
marriage protections to gay and lesbian couples and their children. Both
houses of Congress overwhelmingly rejected an identical proposal in
2004.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee today took
another step towards to undermining the Constitution,” said Caroline
Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
“Lawmakers rightly rejected this measure in 2004, but election year politics
have resurrected this mean-spirited amendment. Congress must reject it
again. Discrimination has no place in our nation’s founding document.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved
the Federal Marriage Amendment, offered by Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO), that
would amend the Constitution to deny states the ability to define marriage
themselves and to deny all “legal incidents” of marriage to all unmarried
couples. It is identical to the proposed constitutional amendment that was
considered - and rejected - by Congress in 2004. Chairman Arlen Specter
(R-PA) has told Judiciary Committee members that he supported reporting the
amendment out of the Judiciary Committee, but will oppose the amendment on the
Senate floor.
The vote took place with committee members
meeting in a small room off of the Senate floor, which was closed to the
public. The ACLU noted that voting to amend the Constitution should not be
done in secret, but rather through a rigorous and thoroughly open
process.
If adopted, the amendment’s broad language would
attack marriages, civil unions, domestic partnerships, and other legal
protections for same-sex couples. Similar state-level constitutional
amendments have already been used to undermine important protections for gay and
lesbian couples and their families, such as the basic right to health
insurance.
Opposition to the amendment has come from a
diverse crowd, including conservative sources: former Congressman Bob Barr
(R-GA), the author of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, was joined by Vice
President Dick Cheney, former Senator John Danforth (R-MO), columnist George
Will, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and others in speaking out against the
measure.
“Senators should not vote to amend the
constitution behind closed doors, in a room so small that the entire committee
barely fits and senators don’t even have enough room to sit down,” said
Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “The nation’s founding
fathers must be rolling over in their graves today with a Senate committee that
hides from the public while rewriting the country’s most precious
document. The nation deserves more from its Senate.”
To read more about the ACLU’s
concerns with the Federal Marriage Amendment, go to:
www.aclu.org/marriageamendment
