c. 2006 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ America’s top Roman Catholic leaders have joined a broad national push against gay marriage one month before the Senate is set to consider a constitutional amendment to ban such unions.
Fifty religious leaders have signed a petition, released Monday (April 24), that urges the Senate to approve the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
As in past efforts, the campaign is led by prominent evangelicals, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson; Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Other signatories include Jewish, Episcopal, Orthodox and Lutheran leaders, as well as Apostle Russell M. Nelson, representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
However, the names that figure most prominently on the document are seven Roman Catholic cardinals, including Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who is considered more progressive than many other cardinals.
The Senate isn’t expected to have the 67 votes required for passage when the measure comes up on June 6. Still, the issue resonates with the Republican base and it increased the turnout in the 2004 elections, when 11 states passed constitutional amendments outlawing gay marriage.
On Tuesday, leaders of the campaign said they will mail millions of postcards asking religious believers to contact their senators to support the amendment.
“Cross-culturally, virtually every known human society understands marriage as a union of male and female,” said the petition, organized by the Washington-based Alliance for Marriage.
It goes on to say, “We have recently watched with extreme alarm the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference. This does not so much modify or even weaken marriage, as abolish it.”
The Vatican has called same-sex marriage “gravely immoral,” and last month the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops endorsed the Marriage Protection Amendment. Church leaders, however, left it up to individual bishops to bring it to the attention of their dioceses.
“On this particular matter we are rock bottom as far as morality goes,” Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia told reporters on Tuesday. “And the church sees this as the only practical way that marriage, with all its importance for all our society, can possibly be safeguarded and protected.”
The Senate defeated a similar bill in 2004. In order to pass, the measure would need a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. If approved by Congress, it would then need to be ratified by 38 states.
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
More progressive faiths, meanwhile, are hoping to launch a counter-offensive in support of gay marriage.
The Unitarian Universalist Association, whose Boston headquarters are located in the only U.S. state to allow gay marriage, said it will launch “Standing on the Side of Love 2006: No Discrimination in the Constitution” to urge support for gay marriage.
Jeff Lutes, executive director of the Christian gay rights group Soulforce, said he will soon announce plans for a similar counter-campaign.
“We have to be more courageous and more bold in speaking out to these actions because our community is under complete assault,” Lutes said. “It’s time for us as a community to stand up and say, `Enough is enough.”’
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