The use of the phrase "constitutionally protect one-man, one-woman marriage" regarding heterosexual marriage is strange. Rarely do you hear that those opposed to same gender marriage are flat out against it as a matter of principle. That point of view would seem to have some legs, albeit arbitrary legs rooted in tradition – which by its nature is not absolute (just observe the very existence of mixed marriages) – but could at least merit a consistent set of assertions.
Said Gary Glenn of American Family Association of Michigan: “California voted overwhelmingly Democratic and at the same time voted to constitutionally protect one-man, one-woman marriage, with minority voters overwhelmingly supporting the Marriage Protection Amendment. In Hamtramck, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, residents voted nearly 90 percent for Barak Obama, while rejecting a so-called “gay rights” ordinance by a 10-point margin.
“As the Republican Party’s braintrust starts casting about for issues consistent with their party’s values that appeal to minorities and Democrats, perhaps they’ll choose to embrace — rather than keep running away from — the issue of stopping the threat that the homosexual activists’ political agenda poses to marriage, traditional family values and religious freedom,” Glenn said.
The American Family Association has an unabashedly fundamentalist religious agenda which can be discerned easily from visiting their home site and associated materials. But if we pull out the religious rhetoric to define the issue constitutionally, what is left that would actually pose a "threat" to heterosexual marriage?
The question is this: What are we actually threatening if people of the same gender are to be married? How would people of the same gender who decide to marry and have their union legally recognized in those terms actually damage heterosexual marriages? How would this have any palpable effect on heterosexual marriage at all?
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