Stop the so-called "Marriage Protection Amendment"

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights once again began to consider a proposed amendment to the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages throughout the country.

Here is the text of The so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment” (S.J.Res.1) “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.”

It is sad that at a time when when there is a war to stop, when there is a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop, and so many other battles to be fought that we have to once again spend time fighting what "raging feminist: angry dyke on the loose" calls a "frivolous amendment:"
"I would," she said in an e-mail to her Senators in June 1994 (the last time the amendment was considered), "like to express my opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment and urge you to vote against any such attempts to make unnecessary changes to the Constitution. These kinds of changes should be reserved for serious legislation.
"In addition to the frivolity of this amendment, I am also concerned that the Federal Marriage Amendment is discriminatory. For this reason, I again ask that you vote NO to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Denying rights to one group will never ensure the rights of another group."

And that "discrimination" is exactly the issue.
The amendment process to the Constitution has almost always been used to expand freedom and democratic rights in this country. Remember the disasterous results of the last ill-fated attempt on the part of the religious right to use the Constitution to curtail people's rights - the 18th amendment outlawing the drinking of alcohol.

"Denying rights to one group will never
ensure the rights of another group."

“Our nation’s founders,” Americans United Barry Lynn wrote, “adopted the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses precisely because they foresaw the dangers posed by the government’s decision to align itself with certain religions over others. Americans United strongly believes that Congress must continue to protect the nation’s fundamental religious freedoms. It should reject any attempt to curtail civil rights at the behest of politically powerful religious groups seeking to impose their theological understanding of marriage on all Americans by constitutional fiat.”