Sun Sentinel: Wording vague, motive clear

MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

Wording vague, motive clear

By William Butte

October 10, 2005

This hurricane season, Florida has been spared all but glancing blows from tropical cyclones that went on to decimate other areas. But a fierce new storm threatens to engulf the entire Sunshine State -- yet with an oddly narrow path of total destruction.

This category 5 catastrophe is called the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, a whirlwind deceitfully designed to wipe out the rights of gay Floridians as completely as Katrina and Rita obliterated the Gulf Coast.

The amendment reads: "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

Pushing this abomination to gay Floridians' civil rights, Florida4Marriage, the Christian Coalition and their legal cohorts, the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, have gathered enough petition signatures to trigger a review by the Florida Supreme Court.

John Stemberger, an Orlando lawyer and Florida4Marriage chairman, insists his vaguely worded anti-gay-marriage amendment only prohibits arrangements that "mimic marriage exactly." But exactly what does "no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof" mean?
Six gay couples have petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to toss out the amendment as unconstitutionally vague and not limited to a single subject. Their lawyers believe that the amendment, if passed, would ban gays from marrying and prohibit civil unions and domestic partnerships -- the "substantial equivalent" already enacted in Vermont, California and Connecticut -- and could leave open to challenge everything from existing domestic-partnership registries to inheritances and private- and public-sector health-care and pension benefits.
Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of the Liberty Counsel, which filed a brief supporting the proposed amendment, said that argument "is scare-mongering tactics that are divorced from reality."

But the ugly reality of the far-reaching scope of similarly passed constitutional amendments has already materialized: in Michigan, when that state's attorney general ruled that gay and lesbian state workers should be disqualified from receiving health benefits for their partners (similar to benefits Florida's government employees currently receive); and in Ohio, with anti-gay groups challenging whether that state's domestic violence laws protect unmarried couples.

The Liberty Counsel has filed a brief supporting the Florida4Marriage ballot proposal that states, in part, that domestic partnership and civil union laws in Vermont, California and Connecticut allow same-sex couples to become "substantially equivalent" to married couples -- the "substantial equivalent thereof" that the Florida4Marriage ballot proposal would invalidate.

So in reality, this amendment is a decidedly unambiguous attempt to prohibit Florida's gay couples from attaining all the legal, social and economic benefits inherent in marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships, as well as jeopardizing existing domestic-partner registries and workplace benefits.

The sad reality for America's gay community -- and gay families with more than 250,000 children under 18 in their care -- is that millions of religious conservatives believe marriage is defined "by the God of nature," instead of as a civil right (acknowledged in a 1967 Supreme Court decision overturning anti-miscegenation laws). They boycott companies with commercials on gay-oriented TV programming, and whine that Starbucks is "promoting a homosexual agenda," because gay author Armistead Maupin is among the noted Americans quoted on its coffee cups.
These religious fundamentalists won't stop until America is theocratic, gays fall under Old Testament law and homosexuality equals a death sentence. They don't seem to realize they sound just like al-Qaida terrorists, railing about the "wrath of God" -- against enemies of their choosing.

Does it not register with them that they are voting against the civil rights of the very neighbors their God commands them to love?

William Butte resides in Deerfield Beach. E-mail him at wmbutte@bellsouth.net.

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