State Marriage Defense Act Introduced in U.S. Senate

by / on February 13, 2014 at 5:16 pm /
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Phil Jensen

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marriageSenators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced  S. 2024, the State Marriage Defense Act, to protect states defend protect marriage from the recent spate of judicial activism seeking to force counterfeit marriage on the entire country.

Cruz released a statement today which said in part:

“I support traditional marriage. Under President Obama, the federal government has tried to re-define marriage, and to undermine the constitutional authority of each state to define marriage consistent with the values of its citizens,” said Sen. Cruz. “The Obama Administration should not be trying to force gay marriage on all 50 states. We should respect the states, and the definition of marriage should be left to democratically elected legislatures, not dictated from Washington. This bill will safeguard the ability of states to preserve traditional marriage for its residents.”

Lee also released a statement which said in part:

Ted Cruz 2016

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“How a state should define marriage should be left up to the citizens of each state,” said Sen. Lee. “It is clear the Obama administration finds the principles of federalism inconvenient in its effort to force states to redefine the institution of marriage. The State Marriage Defense Act provides an important protection for states, respecting the right to choose for themselves how each will treat the institution of marriage under the law.”

The Family Research council issued a statement in support of these efforts:

The State Marriage Defense Act is a response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in United States v. Windsor. Windsor struck down the federal definition of marriage in Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act because the Court ruled that DOMA conflicted with the tradition of the federal government deferring to the authority of individual states to define and regulate marriage.

The State Marriage Defense Act is necessary because current Obama administration policy goes beyond the legal boundaries of Windsor with some federal agencies adopting rules recognizing the same sex relationships of couples, even if they reside in a state that does not recognize their relationship thereby doing what the court reserved for the states defining and regulating marriage. The State Marriage Defense Act was originally introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in January by Congressman Randy Weber (R-Texas) and currently has 57 co-sponsors.

Republicans should have passed a federal marriage amendment when the controlled the White House and congress under President Bush. If they had, the relentless attacks on marriage which have been perpetrated by the Left under the Obama Regime would not have been possible. Instead, Republicans chose to squander those years and that opportunity, spending the American people’s money like drunken sailors and ruining the party’s credibility.

It is sad that we would even have to think of enshrining the obvious (that marriage can only be formed between a man and a woman) in the U.S. Constitution, but that is the only place in American law and government that is even remotely safe from Leftist judicial activists and usurpers like the Obama Administration. Now it is almost too late to protect civilization and American families from the hedonistic barbarians. We need every measure like the State Marriage Defense Act that we can get.

Woodrow Wilcox

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Bob Ellis has been the owner of media company Dakota Voice, LLC since 2005. He is a 10-year U.S. Air Force veteran, a political reporter and commentator for the past decade, and has been involved in numerous election and public policy campaigns for over 20 years. He was a founding member and board member of the Tea Party groups Citizens for Liberty and the South Dakota Tea Party Alliance. He lives in Rapid City, South Dakota with his wife and two children.
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  • Dawn D

    I see a HUGE problem with this Bill. Simply put allowing any State to define marriage as that State see fit would potentially undermine the ruling and effect of Loving v. Virginia. If it is not carefully worded to get around that issue, you would very likely see a a return to those days of long ago that mixing of races through marriage was not allowed.

    That would not be a very pretty picture, politically.

    • There is no problem whatsoever with this bill. It seeks to put right what has been assaulted by activists judges and an activist executive branch seeking to usurp law.

      This bill also would not in the slightest undermine Loving v. Virginia. Loving v. Virginia set right what bigoted Democrats made wrong in denying a man and a woman who happen to have different skin tones from marrying. If I have freckles, should I be denied marriage to a woman with pure white skin or pure black skin? Nonsense. Democrat bigotry sought to prevent a man and a woman from marrying on the basis of the color of their skin-akin to bigotry on the basis of eye color.

      Meanwhile, as human beings for thousands of years have understood instinctively, it takes a man and a woman to form a marriage. Skin color is irrelevant to their ability to create a child or to raise that child in a stable, balanced and healthy environment.

      Even most Democrats aren’t stupid enough these days to seek a legislative return to the institutional bigotry they embraced in the past. There is no danger whatsoever that protecting marriage from homosexual activist and their useful idiots would lend itself to institutional Democrat racial discrimination.

  • As I said, it’s pretty farfetched to think that even Democrat bigotry would reassert itself toward institutional racism, especially using the protection of marriage from homosexual activists as a vehicle.

    Evil comes and goes in ebbs and flows. Slavery was once fashionably accepted, as were things like eugenics. Thankfully, we have come to our senses and rejected such things. In time, we will look back on this insane infatuation with homosexual behavior and wonder how we ever could have looked on it favorably, much less how we could consider two homosexuals having sex as being able to form a marriage.

    • Dawn D

      Supposed “Democrat bigotry” is not where slavery evolved from. It was here before there WAS a “democrat” even in existence. Nor was it the reason that it pervaded as deeply and for as long as it did here in our land.

      When we speak of slavery in our land, you know as well as I that slavery was rooted through absolute power over someone deemed ‘lesser’ in equality and kept that way through the teachings of the dogmatic Scripture of the times. People of those times felt they had a God-given right to own someone else.

      They were wrong about that then, and those who use dogmatic Scripture to keep two people from Unity - regardless of the sex of both - are wrong now.

      • The Republican Party was founded primarily on the movement to abolish slavery.

        It was the Democrats who fought to maintain slavery of black Americans, willing to go to such great lengths to maintain slavery of black Americans that they seceded from the United States and fought America’s bloodiest war to maintain it. It was also the Democrat Party which for 150 years continued to try to deny their fellow dark-skinned Americans the full blessings of liberty…until they learned they could enslave many black Americans through the “crack cocaine” of government largess and programs which keep them looking to government to manage their lives.

        Democrats continue to see black Americans as “lesser” and incapable of taking care of themselves without government to provide for them and give special protection to them. Conservatives know better, especially since many black Americans have not only succeeded but have thrived without availing themselves of government paternalism.

        Homosexual activists and their useful idiots also see homosexuals as “lesser” beings who can’t control their own impulses and do what is right-rather like animals who are slaves to their impulses. Conservatives know better, having seen countless homosexuals who finally decided they didn’t want to live contrary to their created nature any more, and made changes for the better in their lives.

        It was Democrats who distorted Scripture to justify the enslavement of their fellow dark-skinned Americans, and it is Democrats (and closeted Democrats who wear an “R” outwardly) who today distort Scripture to justify the continued enslavement of homosexuals to their errant impulses.

        It was those undistorted Scriptures upon which Western civilization rests, and upon which this nation was built. We invite disaster when we kowtow to those who would distort them out of selfish motives.

        • Dawn D

          Just a quick question and I’ll move on from here.

          Should the United States - and I strongly suspect we will - have a decision favorable from the SCOTUS in the near future which has the same effect (legally) as that of Loving v. Virginia, and we become a nation that has same-sex marriage recognized nationally, i.e. every county, every state, and our federal territories; is it your position that at some point in time you’d be willing to overturn that precedent and take those sanctioned rights away from people who may have lived a near lifetime in a monogamous, safe, and secured status?

          • Whether or not that happens depends on whether people like John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy sell us out once again.

            And yes, if these and other “judges” sell out the American people and what is right on the altar of hedonism and self-centered pap, I would not only be willing to overturn that illegal precedent, I would work for it until it was achieved or until my dying breath, whichever came first.

            That is what John Quincy Adams and his fellow abolitionists did when they worked to “take away those sanctioned rights” SCOTUS gave to slave owners in Dred Scott.

            As Lincoln is credited with saying (and it’s consistent with Scripture), you cannot have a right to do that which is wrong.

  • thisoldspouse

    As Tony Perkins mentioned, there shouldn’t even be a need for this bill, other than to try to reign in the lawlessness of this administration and its compliant, complicit courts. Section 2 of DOMA is still in effect as it was unaddressed by Windsor, indeed, its operation was CALLED UPON to strike down Section 3. What unmitigated gall and a perversion of all sound reason to use as a pretext “states rights” to affirm one state’s novel, radical redefinition of marriage and then repudiate this right for another.

    Where is Obama’s advocacy and legal support for states now fighting court cases against their constitutional marriage amendments? He has repeatedly stated that he believes the definition of marriage should be left up to the individual states. Was that just another bald-faced lie that we can add to his arm-long and growing list of lies to the American people? Is there anything out of the mouth of that devious despot that anyone, Left or Right, can believe?