Badpuppy Gay Today |
Thursday, 6 February, 1997 |
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In a vote of 44 to 7, the Hawai`i state House has approved a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. The measure has been rushed to Hawai`i's Senate because of increased publicity over the issue as well as fundamentalist-inspired fears. Opponents of same-sex marriage hope to put the measure on the state ballot in November, 1998. Anti-marriage lawmakers, using the latest ploy of the religious right, are touting the abrupt end of the democratic process should favorable court rulings prevail. "The judicial branch of government has at this point refused to recognize this legislative policy and continues to act on a path which if left unchecked will represent a very dangerous departure in our democratic tradition," said Representative Terrance W.H. Tom, a Democrat who heads the House Judiciary Committee. Supporters of same-sex marriage, including Dan Foley, a lawyer representing the three same-sex couples in their suit against Hawai`i, believe that the House measure was composed too quickly and is therefore legally flawed. The Senate, says Foley, will be unlikely to pass on it. "They (the House) may eventually come up with a constitutional amendment," Foley announced, "but it won't be this one." In 1993, Hawai`i's Supreme Court ruled that denying marriage licenses to people of the same gender violated the state Constitution's provisions for equal protection. The Hawai`i Legislature retaliated by limiting marriage to same-sex couples. Judge Kevin Chang, of Hawai`i's Circuit Court, ruled in December, 1996 that the state had not been able to show any compelling reasons to ban same-sex marriages. The Reverend Louis P. Sheldon, a leading fundamentalist crusader against same-sex unions, wrote in USA Today to make his "most fundamental and important point" namely, that same-sex marriage is "neither culturally nor physiologically possible." Anthropology, however, refutes his claim. Clellan Ford and Frank Beach, in their landmark study, Patterns of Sexual Behavior, noted that same-sex love had been institutionalized and made acceptable in two thirds of the 76 tribal cultures they surveyed over a thirty year period. Other leading scholars, including Alfred Kinsey and Wainwright Churchill, support this research. Sheldon's overfocus on the "physiological" or anatomical areas shows, said gay activist Warren D. Adkins, "how this fundamentalist continues to judge the quality of committed relationships by pushing an unimaginative and dogmatic 'missionary' idea of the 'proper' positioning of the genitals. He ignores, says Adkins, "the great variety of heterosexual positionings enumerated in ancient India's Kama Sutra. "If homosexuality is unnatural," continued the activist, "then almost everything humans do is 'unnatural,' like riding bicycles or wearing clothing." Archives:
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