The Marriage Law Project at The Catholic University of America

TOP6NEWS - October 18, 2004

1-NEWS: Anglican report sharply criticizes Episcopals

2-NEWS: Mayday for marriage draws thousands

3-NEWS: CA judge gives Campaign for CA Families full party status

4-NEWS: Bloomberg files suit to stop contractor's law

5-OP-ED: J. Jacoby: M can't be left to the states, it's too important

6-OP-ED?: Salon article on m amendment in OH

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1-NEWS: Anglican report sharply criticizes Episcopals

Report: http://windsor2004.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/downloads/windsor2004full.pdf
Griswold’s response: http://demo.episcopalchurch.org/3577_52922_ENG_HTM.htm

Anglican Communion report criticizes U.S. church over gay bishop
By Robert Barr, Associated Press Writer | October 18, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2004/10/18/anglicans_await_report_on_divisive_gay_issue/
LONDON -- An Anglican church commission on Monday sharply criticized the U.S. Episcopal Church for consecrating a gay bishop and called on the church to apologize and refrain from promoting any other clergy living in a same-sex union.

The report of the commission headed by Irish primate Robin Eames also proposed that the 38 national churches that constitute the Anglican Communion sign a covenant expressing their support for what it called current Anglican teachings.

The report also called on conservative bishops -- including some from Africa -- who have offered to forge relationships with disaffected Episcopal congregations to desist from such activities, apologize and affirm their desire to remain within the Anglican Communion.

It further urged those archbishops and bishops who have intervened with Episcopal churches to seek an accommodation with the Episcopal bishop or bishops involved.

In consecrating V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire last November, the report said, the Episcopal bishops "acted in the full knowledge that very many people in the Anglican Communion could neither recognize nor receive the ministry as a bishop in the church of God of a person in an openly acknowledged same-gender union."

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2-NEWS: Mayday for marriage draws thousands

Thousands Rally on the Mall To Protest Same-Sex Marriage
By Caryle Murphy and Hamil R. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 16, 2004; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36814-2004Oct15.html
Thousands of people, many of them evangelical Christians, gathered on the Mall yesterday for a three-hour rally to protest same-sex marriage and defend what they call "biblical, traditional marriage."

Standing before huge silhouettes of a man and a woman facing each other, conservative Christian speakers warned that putting same-sex marriage on a legal par with heterosexual marriage would be dangerous to the nation's moral life.

James C. Dobson, chairman of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, raised cheers at the "Mayday for Marriage" demonstration when he vowed not to let marriage "be thrown on the ash heap of history."

"If marriage means everything, it means nothing," Dobson said. "And we must defend the traditional definition of marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman."

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3-NEWS: CA judge gives Campaign for CA Families full party status

Gay-nuptials foes win right to defend state law
Ruling allows groups to join suit of attorney general
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 16, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/16/BAGU19ARPK1.DTL
Two groups opposed to same-sex marriage won permission from a San Francisco judge Friday to join in the defense of the state law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The ruling by Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer was a victory for the Campaign for California Families and the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund, who say Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a supporter of gay rights, can't be trusted to vigorously defend the law against constitutional challenges currently in the court.

Twelve same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco sued to challenge the marriage law after a California Supreme Court ruling in August that voided nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages performed at San Francisco City Hall in February and March. The marriages were authorized by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who contended the state law banning such unions -- which was passed by the California Legislature in 1977 and reaffirmed in 2000 by voters' approval of Proposition 22 -- was unconstitutional.

The justices ruled only that Newsom had exceeded his authority and said they would not decide the constitutionality of the state marriage law until lower courts reviewed it.

The two organizations want to mount a broader defense, arguing that state-sanctioned same-sex marriage would harm traditional families and society as a whole, evidence that Kramer seemed reluctant Friday to consider.

The judge said he doubted that factual disputes were relevant to the legal question before him: whether the marriage law discriminates unconstitutionally on the basis of sex or sexual orientation. He said he wanted to resolve that issue as quickly as possible and indicated a full-scale trial was unlikely.

Kramer's decision Friday puts the organizations in a position to take part in all hearings and appeal adverse rulings. Lawyers for the 12 couples and the city argued that Campaign for California Families and the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund had no legal rights at stake - an issue that has not yet been resolved, despite Friday's ruling - and should be limited to filing written arguments.

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4-NEWS: Bloomberg files suit to stop contractor's law

NYC Mayor Sues To Block Gay Benefits
by Beth Shapiro
365Gay.com Newscenter
New York Bureau
Posted: October 15, 2004 2:07 pm ET
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/10/101504nycBens.htm
(New York City) New York Mayor Bloomberg is going to court to overturn a law that would force companies doing business with the city to offer benefits to the domestic partners of their employees.

The legislation was passed by city council in May. The following month Bloomberg vetoed it saying the law would hurt the city. Two weeks later council overrode the veto by a 41 - 4 vote.

The legislation is to take effect October 26. It would require contractors that do more than $100,000 of business each year with NYC to offer the equal benefits.

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5-OP-ED: J. Jacoby: M can't be left to the states, it's too important

Boston Globe, MA, October 17, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/17/why_marriage_cant_be_left_to_states/

Why marriage can't be left to states
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
AN ISSUE as urgent as the future of marriage in America deserved more than the three minutes CBS newsman Bob Schieffer allowed it during last week's debate between President Bush and Senator John Kerry. And it deserved a more thoughtful introduction than Schieffer's irrelevant question about whether "homosexuality is a choice." (Do we debate issues of religious liberty by first asking if "religion is a choice?") Even so, in their brief exchange on what may turn out to be the most critical social question of the next four years, Bush and Kerry each said something significant.

The president explained why a constitutional amendment is the only option for those who want to preserve the timeless understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. There is already a federal law on the books -- the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- that purports to do just that. "But I'm concerned that that will get overturned. And if it gets overturned, then we'll end up with marriage being defined by courts, and I don't think that's in our nation's interests."

Kerry, who claims to oppose same-sex marriage but who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, replied that there is no reason to treat marriage as a federal issue. "With respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage those laws. And they're proving today -- every state -- that they can manage them adequately."

Kerry's call for leaving marriage to the states echoes the old segregationist argument that the federal government had no business interfering with the states' handling of race relations. Now as then, "states' rights" is a smokescreen for the protection of something most Americans find objectionable: Jim Crow in the 1950s and '60s, same-sex marriage today. And just as state sovereignty was not permitted to override the compelling national interest in racial equality, it cannot be allowed to override the compelling national interest in preserving the definition of marriage that Americans have always embraced.

In any event, it simply is not true that the US legal system has always left marriage to the states. In 1967, Virginia's ban on interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia. Nine years later, the Supreme Court refused to uphold a Missouri prison regulation that blocked inmates from getting married. Moreover, as Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has noted, "the question whether the basic legal definition of marriage is a national issue or a states' rights issue was tackled once before and settled, in the 19th century."

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It is only a matter of time before a federal judge -- perhaps even the Supreme Court -- brushes aside the federal Defense of Marriage Act and orders other states to give "full faith and credit" to same-sex marriages from Massachusetts. The only way to prevent the seething discord such a ruling will lead to is by changing the Constitution. Constitutional change should never be undertaken lightly. But there are few institutions more vital to society's well-being than marriage.

Bush is right: It is not in our national interest for so grave a question to be decided by judicial diktat. Far better that it be decided openly and fairly, with public debate and the participation of Congress and the states. Anything else would be profoundly undemocratic -- and unwise.

. Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

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6-OP-ED: Salon article on m amendment in OH

"Homosexuals are hellbound!"
Churches in Ohio are rallying their massive flocks behind the most strident anti-gay marriage amendment in the nation -- and the Republican National Committee is in heaven.

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By Michelle Goldberg
Salon http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/18/gayohio/print.html

Oct. 18, 2004 | COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Julie Reeves and Leigh Mamlin live in a split-level, stucco-and-brick house in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, with their two children, 18-month-old Frannie and 3-year-old Charlie. Reeves, a silver-haired 45-year-old, works full-time as an administrator at Ohio State University, her alma matter, while 40-year-old Mamlin, the children's biological mother, stays home. A grey minivan is parked in the driveway and baby books are piled on the coffee table. As they sit in their cozy living room on Sunday evening, Frannie nestles in Mamlin's lap while Charlie perches on Reeves' knee.

If Reeves and Mamlin weren't lesbians, their nuclear family would seem almost anachronistically average. Because they are, they find themselves in the middle of a raging election-season culture war that could leave Mamlin and the children without health insurance and Reeves without child custody. "It's such a personal assault," says Mamlin. "We feel violated, misunderstood, misrepresented and hated by people who are ignorant of who we truly are." And it's all coming from their fellow citizens.

On Nov. 2, Ohio will vote on Issue 1, a state constitutional amendment that purports to simply ban same-sex marriage but actually goes much further. Ten other states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah -- are also voting on anti-gay marriage amendments. They're all expected to pass, most by wide margins. Eight of the state amendments prohibit domestic partnerships or any other public benefits or recognition for gay couples. But as a headline on the front page of Columbus Dispatch recently said, "Issue 1 wording makes it the strictest." Polls show support for it hovering above 60 percent.

A crucial electoral battleground state, Ohio hasn't done well during the Bush era. In the last four years, it's lost a quarter million jobs. A report from the U.S. Census Bureau recently rated Cleveland the poorest big city in the country. Young people are leaving the state in droves. In August, Brent Larkin, editorial page director of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote about Ohio's "raging brain drain."

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The audience stares at him in open-mouthed amazement. Looking like she's been slapped, McClellan walks out of the room and starts crying. "My father was a D-Day lander and a World War II hero," she says later. "He freed two concentration camps. All I could think of was here are all of these people who have fought and given their lives to keep our country free of maniacal people like that guy. This guy reminded me of a Hitler youth. At this stage of our evolution, why is there such a maniacal hatred of people?"

Had she checked out Johnston's Web site, she wouldn't have been so shocked. Unlike national religious right leaders, Johnston isn't coy about his agenda. He publishes poems like "America's Final Crisis," which prophesies that, unless the country adopts biblical law, "You'll be governed by queers and whores" and tyrannized with a "U.N. branded sword." In case that's not clear enough, he also offers a tract titled, "Convincing Reasons HOMOSEXUALS are HELLBOUND!"

During a question-and-answer period, someone says they'd once heard Johnston call for the execution of gays and lesbians. He vigorously denies the charge. Later, he tells me that the decision to put gays to death is a matter best left up to the states. "If we ever had a nation sufficiently Christian" to make homosexuality illegal, he says, imposing capital punishment for homosexuality would be a subject for "an in-house debate. There were capital crimes in the Bible, and that would be something debated."

At the end of the gathering, Melamed gives a stirring peroration. He speaks of being a young boy enthralled with JFK and hope for America. "What does this issue mean? It's all about what this country means," he says. Referring to Johnston, he declares, "When the light shines on this kind of rhetoric, their hopes dim and they're dimming every day." His voice keeps rising. "This amendment will be defeated and I hope I never see the day when this kind of rhetoric prevails in this country." The audience leaps to their feet as he finishes, applauding both his words and his conviction that decency will carry the day.

In large swaths of Ohio, though, as in large swaths of America, Johnston's rhetoric is already prevailing.
On a recent Saturday evening service at the Potters House, an evangelical church on Columbus' outskirts, pastor Tim Oldfield begins his sermon by launching immediately into a jeremiad against homosexuality. "We're living in a time that a lifestyle that at one time was on the list of mental disorders, called sodomy, is now called an alternative lifestyle," he says. "The Bible calls it abomination. Abomination is something disgusting." An old woman in the audience nods and says, "Very disgusting."

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