Senator Sam Brownback (R - KS)

Statement on the Federal Marriage Amendment
July 13, 2004

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Mr. BROWNBACK. I thank the Senator from Colorado for his leadership in putting this issue before the U.S. public and before the world. This is something we need to debate.

I want to specifically address the argument that is being put forward so often from the other side that we do not need to do this now; there is no fire burning; there is no particular issue that is going on here; the States can easily handle this; just let them handle it and take care of it; we do not need to do this until the Supreme Court takes it up.

I want to talk about, Why do we need to take this up now? Fortunately, we have a case study. People who went to business school, went to law school, learn through case studies. You study a case, study what took place, and you try to analyze what happened there to figure out what could have been done better, what should have been done, what was done, and what was its impact.

We have an excellent case study in the Netherlands on what is taking place when this sort of debate occurs. The reason it is important to engage this debate now and not wait until after the Supreme Court might rule, or after this goes through a number of States, is because of what they went through in the Netherlands.

I want to talk about one chart, the out-of-wedlock birth rates in the Netherlands, 1970-2003.

You can see it does not have a favorable trendline. In 1970, it is down around 2 percent. Indeed, the Netherlands was noted for a long period of time for having a very low out-of-wedlock birth rate, and among European countries they were highly regarded for that. Even though it was an open society, it had a very low out-of-wedlock birth rate. People had children in wedlock.

Then you can see in 1980 this thing starts rocketing and really taking off. What took place in the Netherlands--and I am going to have quotes from some Dutch scholars that just recently came out. We have the material from Stanley Kurtz that a number of people talked about. But what happened there was this ongoing debate for a period of about 10 years before same-sex marriage passed in the Netherlands, this public debate about, you know, we can have different sorts of family arrangements, we can have registered partnerships. They had that before same-sex marriage passed.

We had symbolic marriage registers for same-sex couples. We had the first supreme court case loss, first court case loss--and what we had was just this debate and discussion with the society, the culture, over a period of years saying we can separate this issue of raising children and the issue of marriage. We can have marriages just be an expression of care and concern and love for each other without really considering or thinking about what it is, the union of man and woman and raising children together.

We now have social science data. We have discussed a lot on this floor that the best place to raise a child is in a family with a man and woman, a husband and wife, bonded together for life in a low-conflict marriage. We know that is the ideal place. We have discussed that. The social science data is clear on it.

Yet what you saw take place here as you engage this debate and society started talking to itself, reforms and court orders, we saw society saying it is not that critical how marriage is organized in looking at children. It is more about the adults than about the children. Let us open this institution.

What took place was you had this huge growth to where it is up to 30 percent of children born out of wedlock in the Netherlands in 2003 from the 1980 total here at 5 percent over that period of time.

What do scholars say about this? Dutch scholars are actually saying we have to figure some way to try to reinstitute the notion and the nature of traditional marriage. The marriage between a man and woman, raising children in this type of household, is the best place for us to do that.

In recent years, they note, there is statistical evidence of Dutch marital decline, including ``a spectacular rise in the number of illegitimate births.'' By creating a social and legal separation between the ideas of marriage and parenting, these scholars warn, same-sex marriage may make young people in the Netherlands feel less obligated to marry before having children.

Again, this ongoing debate about marriage isn't about forming this bond and a family unit. It is how two people express love for one another, and then that started permeating and getting into society.

One of the signatories, Dutch law professor M. Van Mourik, said that ``the reputation of marriage as an institution--in Holland--is in serious decline.'' The decision to legalize gay marriage, said Mourik, should certainly have never happened. ``In my view, that has been an important contributing factor to the decline in the reputation of marriage.''

One of the letters' other signatories, Dr. Joost van Loon, believes gay marriage has contributed to a decline in the reputation of Dutch marriage. It is ``difficult to imagine'' that the Dutch campaign for gay marriage did not have ``serious social consequences,'' said Van Loon, citing ``an intensive media campaign based on the claim that marriage and parenthood are unrelated.''

My point in saying this and addressing the concerns from the other side that it is not particularly timely, we need to do work on other things, is if we don't engage and discuss this and talk about the importance of marriage and the natural union and raising children in that setting, you will see society say, I guess it doesn't matter, these things are separate. And you will see this taking place more where we have slowed down and stopped the rise in out-of-wedlock births in the United States. This isn't something that has been charting up for a long term here, and that has been capped and started back down.

Now we are pushing in a welfare reform bill--a discussion about marriage and the welfare reform bill--because we know it is the best place to raise children. It will result in a healthier relationship for a man and a woman on a long-term basis. People will live healthier, longer, and happier.

We don't want this to happen in the United States. The case study is here, and we look at the incredible social experiment--something that has not been done in societies for 5,000 years. We are talking about putting that in society. We need to push back and say no, this is not good for children. It is not good for families. It is not good for America, nor the American culture.

I urge my colleagues when they say this isn't timely to look at what has happened in the case study we have. If this isn't discussed at a very early stage and people say, no, this is not the way we want to go, then you will get this rise taking place and the situation none of us want and that everybody agrees is not good for the children. I think one has to ask oneself in this debate, where are we going to focus? Are we going to focus on raising the next generation or are we going to focus on other issues? I think clearly the right focus for legislators in looking to build a good, strong society in the future is to focus on that next generation.

I thank my colleague from Colorado for leading this debate. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.