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Here's a little that you may want to think about the next time you make that claim ... from one of the DOMA cosponsors: Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the 104th Congress, Second Session Vol. 142 WASHINGTON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1996 No. 123 Senate Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague, the senior Senator from Oklahoma, in cosponsoring the Defense of Marriage Act. Although I am glad to work with Senator Nickles in this effort, I must admit that, in all of my nearly 44 years in the Congress, I never envisioned that I would see a measure such as the Defense of Marriage Act. It is incomprehensible to me that federal legislation would be needed to provide a definition of two terms that for thousands of years have been perfectly clear and unquestioned. That we have arrived at a point where the Congress of the United States must actually reaffirm in the statute books something as simple as the definition of "marriage" and "spouse," is almost beyond my grasp. But as the current state of legal affairs has shown, this bill is a necessary endeavor. ...Let me read from, "The Case For Same-Sex Marriage," by William N. Eskridge, Jr.
My guess is that one or more of the foregoing denominations will tilt towards same sex unions or marriages in the next 5 to 10 years. Even the religions that are most prominently opposed to gay marriages have clergy who perform gay marriage ceremonies. The Roman Catholic Church firmly opposes gay marriage but its celebrated priest, John J. McNeill says that he and many other Catholic clergy have performed same-sex commitment services. Although Father McNeill's position is marginalized within the Catholic Church, it reflects the views of many devout Catholics. Support for same-sex marriage is probably most scarce among Baptists in the South.
You can be assured that same-sex marriage is an issue that has arrived worldwide and that efforts to head it off will only be successful in the short term.
...Therefore, Mr. President, the time is now, the place is here, to debate this issue. It confronts us now. It comes even nearer.
There are those who say, "Why does the Senate not debate and act upon relevant matters?" This is relevant. And it is relevant today.
In very simple and easy to read language, this bill says that a marriage is the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and that a spouse is a husband or wife of the opposite sex. There is not, of course, anything earth-shaking in that declaration. We are not breaking any new ground here. We are not setting any new precedent. We are not overturning the status quo in any way, shape or form. On the contrary, all this bill does is reaffirm for purposes of Federal law what is already understood by everyone.
Mr. President, throughout the annals of human experience, in dozens of civilizations and cultures of varying value systems, humanity has discovered that the permanent relationship between men and women is a keystone to the stability, strength, and health of human society—a relationship worthy of legal recognition and judicial protection. The purpose of this kind of union between human beings of opposite gender is primarily for the establishment of a home atmosphere in which a man and a woman pledge themselves exclusively to one another and who bring into being children for the fulfilment of their love for one another and for the greater good of the human community at large.
Obviously human beings enter into a variety of relationships. Business partnerships, friendships, alliances for mutual benefits, and team memberships all depend upon emotional unions of one degree or another. For that reason, a number of these relationships have found standing under the laws of innumerable nations.
However, in no case, has anyone suggested that these relationships deserve the special recognition or the designation commonly understood as "marriage." The suggestion that relationships between members of the same gender should ever be accorded the status or the designation of marriage flies in the face of the thousands of years of experience about the societal stability that traditional marriage has afforded human civilization. To insist that male-male or female-female relationships must have the same status as the marriage relationship is more than unwise, it is patently absurd.
...Out of same-sex relationships, no children can result. Out of such relationships emotional bonding oftentimes does not take place, and many such relationships do not result in the establishment of "families" as society universally interprets that term. Indeed as history teaches us too often in the past, when cultures waxed casual about the uniqueness and sanctity of the marriage commitment between men and women, those cultures have been shown to be in decline. This was particularly true in the ancient world in Greece and, more particularly, in Rome. In both Greece and Rome, same-sex relationships were not uncommon.
...Suetonius, the Roman biographer, relates that Julius Caesar prostituted his body to be abused by King Nicomedes of Bithynia, and that Curio the Elder, in an oration, called Caesar "a woman for all men and a man for all women."
While same-sex relations were not unknown, therefore, to the ancients, same-sex marriages were a different matter. But they did sometimes involve utilization of the forms and the customs of heterosexual marriage. For example, the Emperor Nero, who reigned between 54 and 68 A.D., took the marriage vows with a young man named Sporus, in a very public ceremony, with a gown and a veil and with all of the solemnities of matrimony, after which Nero took this Sporus with him, carried on a litter, all decked out with ornaments and jewels and the finery normally worn by empresses, and traveled to the resort towns in Greece and Italy, Nero, "many a time, sweetly kissing him."
Mr. President, the marriage bond as recognized in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well as in the legal codes of the world's most advanced societies, is the cornerstone on which the society itself depends for its moral and spiritual regeneration as that culture is handed down, father to son and mother to daughter.
Indeed thousands of years of Judeo-Christian teaching leave absolutely no doubt as to the sanctity, purpose, and reason for the union of man and woman. One only has to turn to the Old Testament and read the word of God to understand how eternal is the true definition of marriage.
Mr. President, I am rapidly approaching my 79th birthday, and I hold in my hands a Bible, the Bible that was in my home when I was a child. This is the Bible that was read to me by my foster father. It is a Bible, the cover of which having been torn and worn, has been replaced. But this is the Bible, the King James Bible. And here is what it says in the first chapter of Genesis, 27th and 28th verses:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth...
And when God used the word "multiply," he wasn't talking about multiplying your stocks, bonds, your bank accounts or your cattle on a thousand hills or your race horses or your acreages of land. He was talking about procreation, multiplying, populating the earth.
And after the flood, when the only humans who were left on the globe were Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives, the Bible says in chapter 9 of Genesis:
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.
Christians also look at the Gospel of Saint Mark, chapter 10, which states:
But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife.
And they twain shall become one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Woe betide that society, Mr. President, that fails to honor that heritage and begins to blur that tradition which was laid down by the Creator in the beginning.
...This reflects a demand for political correctness that has gone berserk. We live in an era in which tolerance has progressed beyond a mere call for acceptance and crossed over to become a demand for the rest of us to give up beliefs that we revere and hold most dear in order to prove our collective purity. At some point, a line must be drawn by rational men and women who are willing to say, "Enough!"
Certainly in today's far too permissive world, traditional marriage as an institution is struggling. Divorce is far too frequent, as are male and female relationships which do not end in marriage. Certainly we do not want to launch a further assault on the institution of marriage by blurring its definition in this unwise way.
The drive for the acceptance of same-sex or same-gender " marriage" should serve for us as an indication that we have drawn too close to the edge and that we as a people are on the verge of trying so hard to please a few that we destroy the values and the spiritual beliefs of the many. Moreover, to seek the codification of same-sex marriage into our national or State legal codes is to make a mockery of those codes themselves. Many legal scholars believe that only after a majority of society comes to a consensus on the legality or illegality of one issue or another should that issue be written down in our legal institutions. The drive for same-sex marriage is, in effect, an effort to make a sneak attack on society by encoding this aberrant behavior in legal form before society itself has decided it should be legal—a proposition which is far in the distance, if ever to be realized.
...Mr. President, for these reasons and others named by the opponents of same-sex or gender marriage, I hope that our colleagues here in the Senate will demonstrate their thorough opposition to efforts to subvert the traditional definition of "marriage" by going on record today against this very unnecessary idea.
Let us make clear that in our generation, at least, we understand the meaning and purpose of marriage and that we affirm our trust in the divine approbation—you do not have to be a preacher to say this; I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet; I am not a preacher or the son of a preacher; one does not have to be a prophet or a preacher—to affirm our trust in the divine approbation of union between a man and a woman, between a male and female for all time.
Mr. President, 41 years ago I was traveling with a House subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. I visited the city of Baghdad, the city of the Arabian Nights, where Ali Baba followed the 40 thieves through the streets, and from which Sinbad the Sailor departed on his journey to the magnetic mountain.
I asked an old Arab guide to take me down to the old Biblical city of Babylon, where one of the famous seven wonders of the world, the hanging gardens, was created. As I reached the old city of Babylon I stood on the banks of the Euphrates River, that old river that is first mentioned in the Book of Genesis, which like a thread runs through the entire Bible, the Old Testament and the New, and is mentioned again in the book of Revelation.
I stood on the site, or at least I was told I was standing on the site of where Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, held a great feast for 1,000 of his lords. Belshazzar, took the cups that had been stolen from the temple by Nebuchadnezzar. He and his wife and concubines and his colleagues drank from those vessels, and Belshazzar saw the hand of a man writing on the plaster of the wall, over near the candlestick, and the hand wrote "me'ne, me'ne, te'kel, uphar'sin" and the countenance of Belshazzar changed, his knees buckled, and his legs trembled beneath him. He called in his astrologers and soothsayers and magicians and said, "Tell me what that writing means," but they were mystified. They could not interpret the writing. Then the queen told Belshazzar that there was a man in the kingdom who could interpret that writing. So, Daniel was brought before the king and told by the king that he, Daniel, would be clothed in scarlet with a golden chain around his neck, and that he would become a third partner in the kingdom if he could interpret that writing. Daniel interpreted the writing:
God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
That night Belshazzar was slain by Darius the Median, and his kingdom was divided.
Mr. President, America is being weighed in the balances. If same-sex marriage is accepted, the announcement will be official, America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father, two mothers or two fathers will be just as good.
This would be a catastrophe. Much of America has lost its moorings. Norms no longer exist. We have lost our way with a speed that is awesome. What took thousands of years to build is being dismantled in a generation.
I say to my colleagues, let us take our stand. The time is now. The subject is relevant. Let us defend the oldest institution, the institution of marriage between male and female, as set forth in the Holy Bible. Else we, too, will be weighed in the balances and found wanting.
You know whose disgusting, homophobic (don't you just love the whole "gays bring down great civilizations" riff?), religious extremist rant this is, right? Let me give you a hint: It's not a Republican and DOMA may never have passed without this man's enthusiastic and dogged leadership on the issue.
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