    
Maplewoody
Real Name
Username: Maplewoody
Post Number: 802
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, October 1, 2004 - 6:59 am: |     |
The U.S. House of Representatives failed on Thursday to muster the two-thirds majority needed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment backed by President Bush to ban gay marriage.
The largely party-line vote in the Republican-led House was 227-186, 49 votes short of what was required for approval.
In July, Democratic-led foes blocked a similar measure in the 100-member Senate where proponents failed to get even a simple majority against a procedural hurdle.
Backers of the proposed amendment predicted the twin setbacks would help showcase the issue in the Nov. 2 congressional elections.
"This is going to be huge," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, promising to bring the proposal back up for a vote next year. "The American people need to know where their representatives stand."
Democrats charged that Republicans have pushed the measure, along with other doomed "wedge" measures, merely to divide voters and rally social conservatives.
"This is a partisan exercise to distract the American people from the (congressional) Republicans' record of failure," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.
Polls show most Americans oppose gay marriage but are split on whether a constitutional amendment is needed. Surveys also find voters consider many other issues far more important.
For a proposed constitutional amendment to become law, it must be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and then ratified by 38 of the 50 states.
LEAVE IT UP TO STATES?
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, oppose gay marriage. Yet like most fellow Democrats in Congress, they favor leaving the matter to individual states.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, has said he also believes states should decide whether to sanction same-sex marriages, but that Bush sets the administration's positions.
Bush and other proponents of a constitutional amendment argue that gay marriages devalue traditional marriages, and should be banned for the sake of children.
They also contend that a constitutional amendment would prevent "activist" judges and local officials from defying the will of the people by permitting same-sex marriages.
Bush in February called on Congress to approve an amendment to outlaw gay marriage after Massachusetts' highest court ruled gay couples had a right to wed and San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
This helped trigger a wave of lawsuits, some challenging the right of one state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage that was licensed in another.
Shortly before the House vote, Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and an acknowledged homosexual, spoke against the proposal, telling colleagues: "We feel love. We feel it in a different way than you."
Why, Frank asked, is gay marriage "an assault on you?" Said Frank, "What is it you are protecting yourself against? How do we threaten you?"
DeLay replied: "I have utmost respect for the gentleman from Massachusetts and I respect his feelings."
"But what this amendment is about is children," DeLay said, "having children, raising children and the ideal of marriage between one man and one woman."
...Another FAILED proposition,
brought to you by George W Bush...
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