Marriage battle begins on Hill

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday that Congress “must act and act soon” to prevent a few judges and local officials from redefining marriage for everyone, as lawmakers held the first day of hearings on a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a male-female union.

“We didn’t seek this fight, and we don’t relish it,” Mr. Frist, Tennessee Republican, said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “But the courts have brought it to us, and the people will respond. We will not let activist judges redefine marriage for our entire society.

“The wildfire will begin, and in many ways it already has begun,” he said, referring to, among other events, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling last year ordering the legislature to create homosexual “marriage” there.

“Same-sex marriage is likely to spread through all 50 states in the coming years,” he said.

On Capitol Hill yesterday, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and property rights that the recent rulings threaten to force states such as his to comply.

More than 70 percent of Nebraskans voted in 2000 to amend their state constitution to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman, but that was challenged in federal court last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lambda Legal Foundation.

Mr. Bruning said all indications from the court signal that Nebraska’s amendment will be struck down.

“Recent court rulings have created a legal domino effect that may impose a national policy on gay marriage,” he said, adding that his and other states’ constitutional amendments and statutes defending traditional marriage are “not secure.”

“I am here because of the reality that four judges in Massachusetts could eventually invalidate Nebraska’s ban on same-sex marriages,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that a Texas law prohibiting sodomy involving two persons of the same sex violated the due-process clause, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court subsequently ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to “marry.”

That emboldened local authorities in California and New York to begin “marrying” same-sex couples. New York’s attorney general weighed in yesterday, saying New York law prohibits same-sex “marriage.”

Meanwhile, same-sex couples lined up for “marriage” licenses in Portland, Ore., yesterday, after the county started issuing them. Oregon’s governor also said the state’s law doesn’t allow it.

Thousands of same-sex couples have been “married” in San Francisco, and a county in New Mexico also has sanctioned same-sex “marriage.”

Democrats at the hearing yesterday said Republicans are using the issue for political advantage.

“This is a divisive political exercise in an election year, plain and simple,” said Sen. Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat.

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