Excerpt from
The Measure of a Man
by Brian
We should have questions; do they have answers?
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We have been taken round and round the past few months over the supposed “gay” marriage act which, as I write this, is hoping to be a constitutional amendment. For something that is supposed to be this important, I was truly amazed at the brevity of the actual proposed amendment. In fact, it is so brief, here it is:
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JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage. |
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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:
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‘Article—
‘SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. ‘This Article may be cited as the ‘Federal Marriage Amendment’. ‘SECTION 2. MARRIAGE AMENDMENT. |
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‘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.’.
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| Calendar No. 620 |
| 108th CONGRESS |
That’s it. Short, sweet, and to the point. For anyone who has looked at the text of any legislation, you know that most of it is tens and even hundreds of pages long. The language in most legislation also looks like it was written on an enigma machine. In the case of the marriage act, its brevity may be its downfall, well aside from the fact that it is unconstitutional. I read the first proposed amendment back in March, and it occurred to me that if this text is all there is, the amend-ment is going to cause some serious problems. It is far too hazy in its def-initions. Personally, I fault the media for not pointing out this oversight liberal, conservative and NPR. They are the ones who should have been asking questions about this from the start.
The base problem as I see it is that the amendment never defines the terms “man” and “woman.” It appears to assume we all know what a man and a woman are. But do we?
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Read the rest of The Measure Of A Man in Consent Magazine Issue #21 Spring 2004