Oppose The Federal Marriage Amendment

Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment! 


 This amendment would invalidate all legal protections for unmarried couples 
-- gay or straight.
By denying unmarried persons all legal protections for any of the "legal 
incidents" of marriage, the amendment would destroy a wide range of other rights 
that are important to the lives of unmarried persons. Those legal protections 
include state and local civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination based on 
"marital status," state laws protecting unmarried elderly couples who refrain 
from marrying in order to hold on to their pensions, and even state laws 
allowing a person, in the absence of a spouse, to oppose the autopsy of a close 
friend because of the deceased person's religious beliefs. 

 Amending the Constitution is an extreme act.
The first sentence of the proposed constitutional amendment would bar all 
same-sex marriages. However, gay and lesbian couples cannot now marry anywhere in 
the United States. Moreover, Congress already enacted the Defense of Marriage 
Act in 1996, which was an earlier response to the fear of same-sex marriages 
that have never been recognized. 

 The Federal Marriage Amendment would reverse the constitutional tradition of 
protecting, not harming, individual freedoms.
None of the current constitutional amendments restricts individual freedoms. 
In fact, the amendments to the Constitution have been the source of most of 
the Constitution's protections for individual liberty rights. The proposed 
amendment, by contrast, would deny all protection for the most personal decisions 
made by millions of families. 







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DAMN THE CROSS!!! 

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