Steve Quayle News Alerts

January 28, 2004
By Wendy Griffith
CBN News Sr. Reporters

CBN.com – (CBN News) - Even in states with existing Defense of Marriage acts, at least nine states are pushing for new, more sweeping measures by amending their constitutions to specify that marriage must be heterosexual. In this way, they hope to ward off court challenges by activists seeking to make gay marriage legal.

Proposed constitutional amendments that would ban gay marriage have been introduced in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Michigan. One is expected soon in Alabama, and possibly in Idaho.

Supporters say the constitutional amendments are necessary to ensure that legislation and court judgments in other states, such as the recent ruling in favor of gay marriage by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, will not compel recognition of same-sex unions in their own states.

In Indiana, where a gay couple is already challenging the courts to have their union recognized, Attorney General Steve Carter is endorsing a proposed state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman only.

Carter said, "The institution [of marriage] is still under legal attack and we are appreciative of the legislative effort that will help protect this institution."

And in Virginia, the House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved a resolution Friday urging Congress to support a federal constitutional amendment protecting the sanctity of marriage.

In all, 37 states and the federal government have Defense of Marriage acts. Ohio may soon be the 38th state, with its senate approving one of the most far-reaching gay marriage bans in the nation last week.

Gay rights activists call the actions by the states a political attack and discriminatory. President Bush says he might be willing to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, if the courts overrule the Defense of Marriage laws.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/040128b.asp