Marriage's defining moment coming soon

Dear Friend,

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court devoted two days to hearing arguments about a foundational issue for society: the definition of marriage. The questions the justices asked both sets of lawyers provided the nation with the only glimpse of how they may be leaning on this issue before they announce their decisions at the end of June.

	My colleagues Stuart Shepard and Bruce Hausknecht, discussed this pivotal event in detail on the most recent CitizenLink Report.

Two separate cases lay at the heart of each day's arguments. The first concerns Prop. 8, the constitutional amendment California voters adopted in 2008 defining marriage in the Golden State as the union of one man and one woman. State officials refused to defend the amendment in court, forcing a coalition of groups that seek to preserve the definition of marriage to do so.

Chief Justice John Roberts, however, said something we found encouraging:

	"I'm not sure that it's right to view this as excluding a particular group," he told Ted Olson, the lawyer attacking Prop. 8. "When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn't sit around and say, 'Let's have this institution, but let's keep out homosexuals.' The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn't include homosexual couples."

Those purposes, of course, would be bearing and raising the next generation of children. Decades' worth of social science research show children do best when raised by their married mothers and fathers.

The second day was devoted to discussions about the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for all federal purposes, such as tax filings. If DOMA is overturned, the effects would be far-reaching, changing more than 1,000 federal laws that deal with the rights and responsibilities stemming from marriage.

We believe the government has a compelling interest in keeping the current uniform definition of marriage—and though it's difficult to predict what the justices will decide between now and June, we pray this viewpoint will be the one that prevails in the end.
For faith and family,

Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President, Government & Public Policy