For those who haven't seen it, there's a
constitutional amendment that was introduced at the end of May to restrict marriage to a man and a woman.
Text of the proposal is:
JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
`Article--
`Section 1. This article may be cited as the `Marriage Protection Amendment'.
`Section 2. 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.'.
I've heard of such amendments being proposed for a while, and unfortunately someone has finally done the work to get it moving. Currently, it has 6 Democrats and 79 Republicans co-sponsoring it.
Needless to say, codifying discrimination of any kind in the constitution is appalling.
If you haven't already, I urge you to take a few minutes to
contact your representatives (put in your zip and it'll give you a list of all your local, state and federal representatives and the ability to easily write a message to all of them) and encourage them to reject this insanity.
Rather than just complaining about attempts to codify discrimination, we should encourage our representatives to put in a permanent fix. I suggest the following text as a first draft:
Section 1. Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.
Section 2. No current or future amendment of this Constitution or the Constitution of any State shall be construed as permitting discrimination prohibited by this article.
Section 3. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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