[CS-FSLUG] Federal Marriage Amendment Struck Down for Today

[K Montgomery]

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 19:41 -0400, Fred Miller wrote:
> <snip>
>As your phone calls clogged the phone lines into our nation's
> capitol, many senators chose to affirm the Federal Marriage
> Amendment -- some moving from "undecided" to support; some
> moving from "opposed" to support. Six weeks ago, only 33
> senators were committed to voting for the Federal Marriage
> Amendment; at todays roll call vote, 48 senators voted "Yea."
> Your voice made a difference in the votes of seventeen senators!

If I understand the situation, 48 senators didn't actually vote for the
amendment.  They voted that debate be ended and a vote on the amendment
actually take place.  Because 50 senators voted to the contrary, the
resolution died.  Am I incorrect?

Here's my view of this issue.  The Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 has
already defined marriage at the federal level as between a man and a
woman.  However, if a court may rule at a whim that such a law (federal
or state) is unconstitutional, that can only be remedied by a
constitutional amendment.  Some would say that government should not
interfere with marriage, but here the line between the "sacred" and the
"secular" is blurred.  Marriage is foundational to society itself, and a
redefinition of marriage will necessarily redefine the traditional
family structure.  If we decide that it does not matter who raises a
child, where will we end up?

Anyone know what's going on with Senate Resolution 275 ("To affirm the
Defense of Marriage Act", introduced Nov. 23) and House Resolution 3313
("Marriage Protection Act of 2003", introduced Oct. 16)?  I don't quite
understand from the Library of Congress info on the web.

- Kathy