|
Compiled By GayToday
|
Washington, D.C.--Saying it would deprive millions of families of their most
fundamental rights, the American Civil Liberties Union today denounced a
new proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution as an unwarranted attempt to
limit liberty in the United States.
"With only a few exceptions, most of the anti-gay attacks in Congress are
the legal equivalent of sticks and stones," said Christopher E. Anders, an
ACLU Legislative Counsel. "This amendment is the legal equivalent of a
nuclear bomb. It will wipe out every single law protecting gay and lesbian
families and other unmarried couples." |
Mr. Cheney's said during the 2000 Vice Presidential Debate that gay people should have the freedom to be in any relationship they want, but will he change his tune?
|
The amendment will be introduced today at a Washington news conference.
The ACLU said the new proposal would deprive the families of lesbians and
gay men - and all other unmarried couples - of all legal protections for
their relationships by overriding any federal or state constitutional
protections and federal, state and local laws.
The ACLU said that the impact of the amendment would be extremely harmful.
Specifically, the amendment would invalidate all state and local domestic
partnership laws, including those in at least eight states and in more
than 100 counties, cities and towns across the country.
"The extreme measure would even prohibit state and local governments from making their
own decisions on providing benefits to their employees," Anders said.
|
During last year's presidential campaign, Vice President Dick Cheney
explicitly said that "people should be free to enter into any kind of
relationship they want to enter into." He added: "different states are
likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't
think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area."
The ACLU said the proposed amendment would undermine state adoption,
foster care and kinship care laws. In many states, the ACLU said,
unmarried persons - including unmarried relatives, heterosexual couples,
gay and lesbian couples and even unrelated clergy members - have the same
rights as married persons to jointly adopt or provide foster care or
kinship care.
|
Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Zealots to Introduce Anti-Gay Constitutional Amendment
Latest Census--10 States--Same Sex Partners Multiply
Gay Men Do Have Children
Related Sites:
American Civil Liberties Union
GayToday does not endorse related sites.
|
The proposed amendment would also reverse the tradition of protecting -
not harming - individual liberty through constitutional amendments and of
allowing states to adopt stronger civil rights protections.
"The few amendments to the Constitution that have been adopted in the last
200 years are the source of most of the Constitution's protections for
individual liberty rights," Anders said. "The proposed amendment, by
contrast, would deny all protection for the most personal decisions made
by millions of families."
An ACLU letter to the House and Senate on the proposed amendment can be
found at: http://www.aclu.org/congress/l071101a.html
|
