{"id":959,"date":"2004-07-12T13:09:51","date_gmt":"2004-07-12T21:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/07\/12\/andrew-sullivan-on-the-anti-marriage-amendment\/"},"modified":"2004-07-12T13:09:51","modified_gmt":"2004-07-12T21:09:51","slug":"andrew-sullivan-on-the-anti-marriage-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=959","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sullivan on the Anti-Marriage Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

My impression is that relatively few “Alas” readers – lefties that we are – read Andrew Sullivan’s blog often. But I think we should all read his discussion of the Federal Marriage Amendment<\/a>, so I’m taking the liberty of quoting it here:<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there’s only one thing you really need to know about this week’s Senate vote on the amendment. And that is its backers would rather lose votes than propose a simple one-line amendment reserving marriage for heterosexuals. More tolerant alternatives – that would have simply said “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman,” or that would have constitutionalized DOMA, or that would have merely restricted courts – all these have been ruled out in favor of an amendment whose second sentence reads:<\/p>\n

Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof<\/i> be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. (My italics)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you removed the italicized phrase, you’d have a reiteration of the first sentence. But that phrase is critical to the religious right. On its face, it would ban any court-prompted civil unions, domestic partnerships or indeed any protections or “legal incidents” for gay couples short of marriage. That means the end of civil unions in Massachusetts and Vermont, for starters. This is not, and never has been, about “protecting” marriage. If it were, the amendment would need just one sentence, and would stand a far better chance of passing. The amendment is about ensuring the second class citizenship of an entire minority. The timing is designed to exploit fear of that unmentionable minority into a winning strategy for president Bush’s re-election. Because of those two things, it is one of the most disgusting measures ever introduced into the U.S. Senate.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My impression is that relatively few “Alas” readers – lefties that we are – read Andrew Sullivan’s blog often. But I think we should all read his discussion of the Federal Marriage Amendment, so I’m taking the liberty of quoting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}