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Why The Federal Marriage Amendment HAD To Be Defeated By Jeff Jackson (7/15/04)

Many conservatives that are coming here to read this might think that I am going to go on a tirade about how the amendment HAD to be defeated for the sake of leftist social reform or how it HAD to be defeated by gay-rights activists for them to make a point. Well, I’m not. I’m actually going to tell conservatives and those that fancy themselves as “conservatives” why they were wrong to even try to add it to the Constitution. Basically, I am going to tell you why it HAD to be defeated to save conservatism in America

I got a lot of positive feed back when I wrote You Don’t Have a Right to Marry which chronicles what marriage is and how it is not a “right” as some on the left would try to portray it. I also said “There is a truth that marriage, in it's most basic form, is not a government institution; it is a religious institution. For thousands of years marriage has been the cornerstone of religions around the world for forming families and raising their children. But it has also been co-opted by governments around the world as a legally binding status that confers upon their people certain privileges (and in some instances punishments) once they enter into the bonds of matrimony.” At the time, many people agreed with me saying how right on the money that was.

But now we are going to see if they can stick by that as being “right on the money”.

Our Constitution guarantees religious freedom. The first Amendment says so with the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Please note that I am fully aware that even I, myself, have laid down the argument that the first amendment’s support of religious freedom does not give one open freedom to hide anything they do behind such wording. Members of a religion that requires it’s members to murder or sacrifice human beings to fulfill its tenants does indeed have the right to do that. However they also have the right to be tried and convicted of that murder of said people in violation of their “unalienable right” to life and then to be hanged from the neck until dead as well.

If marriage is a religious principle and the first amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting religions or prohibiting the exercise of religions then you cannot, in good faith, support an amendment to the Constitution that would do just that. You cannot have an amendment “28” that says something along the lines of “Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman” because the amendment originated in the Senate (Congress) and would become the law of the land as part of our Constitution.

You would in essence have a dangerous legal precedent set whereby the Constitution would read “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (see footnote 1)”. And by doing this a standard would be set forth that any time the Federal Government wanted to infringe upon religious liberty they would only need to pass an amendment to the Constitution.

We cannot go down that road. We cannot for that road is a road to tyranny and oppression where religious liberty would be slowly eroded by the hand of man for the sake of other men. Congress cannot propose to amend the Constitution in order to define what is and what is not an acceptable religious doctrine because the first amendment strictly forbids it.

The left wing in this nation is in a win-win situation with this amendment proposal and it is on purpose that they are in that position. If the amendment had passed it would have set a precedent for further amending the Constitution to erode rights without having to even repeal the sections that granted such rights. Now that the amendment has failed however they also win. They win because they can continue to carry on corrupting the Judeo-Christian faith from within by pushing for “gay marriage” within the church.

Gay marriage, is an issue that the church must deal with internally because marriage is a religious institution. It is not an issue that followers of the Judeo-Christian faith however must necessarily accept or promote. The “church” is just a collection of us that come together to worship God in a particular way. But the “church” is not the core of our faith; our faith is the core of our faith. And if the “church” falls because it is vile and distorted, then it will fall. But it will only to be replaced by a new church.

Government has to get out of the “marriage” business altogether. If it wants to recognize “unions” between people for legal purposes then it can do so but it should restrain from calling the “marriages”. Because doing that implies that at some point in the future, the “church” from which the institution flows will be forced to abide by whatever definition the State so chooses.