WASHINGTON (ABP) — Rival clergy groups are facing off over a proposal to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage nationwide.
A group of about 30 moderate and liberal Christian and Jewish clergy appeared in a Capitol Hill press conference May 22 to announce a petition and postcard drive to convince senators to vote down the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment.” The proposal is slated for floor debate and a vote after the Senate returns June 5 from its Memorial Day recess.
“This debate is not about the Bible. It is not about homosexuality per se. It is about basic human rights,” said Paul Simmons, a Baptist ethicist and professor at the University of Louisville Medical School in Kentucky, who moderated the press conference.
The group, calling itself Clergy for Fairness, announced that more than 1,600 clergy and other religious leaders had already signed a petition opposing the amendment, S.J. Res. 1. The petition, addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), argues that faith communities should oppose an attempt to restrict the civil rights of one minority group.
“We are concerned that the Marriage Protection Amendment would mark the first time in history that an amendment to the Constitution would restrict the civil rights of an entire group of Americans,” the petition says. “Misusing our nation's most cherished document for this purpose would tarnish our proud tradition of expanding citizens' rights by constitutional amendment, a tradition long supported by America's faith communities.”
The group offers others the chance to sign an online version of the letter at its website, www.clergyforfairness.org, as well as postcards for clergy and laypeople to print out and send to their senators. The site includes other resources, including sample sermons on the topic.
The clergy coalition also pointed out a letter signed by the leaders of 22 religious groups. Its signers include the Alliance of Baptists and the Interfaith Alliance.
The coalition's statement comes just a month after a group of conservative Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders announced a petition drive in support of the amendment. The group, calling itself the Religious Coalition for Marriage, also has a website (www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org) with downloadable postcards, sermons and other resources in support of the amendment.
“Long concerned with rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and absentee fathers, we have recently watched with extreme alarm the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference,” the pro-amendment petition says. “This does not so much modify or even weaken marriage as abolish it. The danger this betokens for family life and a general condition of social justice and ordered liberty is hard to overestimate.”
Its signers include Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land.
The amendment would require approval by two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states before it would take effect. A similar proposal failed to gain even a majority in the Senate in 2004.
Few congressional observers believe the new proposal will make it out of the Senate — but Democrats have complained that Republican leaders are forcing a vote on it in order to distract voters from the party's low approval ratings in the 2006 midterm elections. Pollsters widely credited several state ballot initiatives to ban same-sex marriage with boosting turnout among religious conservative voters in the 2004 elections.
The anti-amendment press conference came on the same day as the release of a new poll showing Americans are evenly divided over the proposal. The Gallup organization's annual Beliefs and Values Survey, conducted May 8-11, showed that 50 percent of respondents support the amendment, while 47 percent oppose it.
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