Dr. Dobson Explains the Failure of the Senate on Marriage
Dr. James Dobson has recently written a commentary for CNN in which he castigates the Senate and the MSM for failing to pass a Defense of Marriage Amendment to the US Constitution by the required two-thirds majority needed. Dr. Dobson breaks down the issue as between cowardly senators and a left leaning media bent on making this country into their image.
On June 7, the U.S. Senate voted for a second time on an amendment to define marriage in the U.S. Constitution as being exclusively between one man and one woman.
Again this year, the amendment failed to pass by a wide margin, falling 18 votes shy of a required two-thirds majority. The final tally was 49 in favor, 48 opposed.
Rarely has there been a greater disconnect between members of the Senate and the American people who put them in power. With the help of the media, which laid down “cover” by claiming voters didn’t care about marriage, 40 Democrats, one Independent and seven Republicans turned their backs on this most basic social institution.
Unfortunately, most of America does not agree with the media on this issue. Time after time in spite of enormous sums of money spent by liberal activist groups, DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) has passed overwhelmingly in every state the issue was brought up.
In Mississippi, traditional marriage was approved by a whopping 86 percent majority. Other state votes registered similar wide margins: Nevada (70 percent), Arkansas (75 percent), Georgia (77 percent), Kentucky (75 percent), Louisiana (78 percent), Nebraska (70 percent), Missouri (71 percent), Montana (66 percent), North Dakota (73 percent), Ohio (62 percent), Michigan (59 percent), Oklahoma (76 percent), Utah (66 percent), Kansas (70 percent) and Texas (75 percent). Even states considered to be more liberal voted for traditional marriage, including Hawaii (69 percent), Alaska (68 percent) and Oregon (57 percent). (snip)
CNN and the mainstream televised news networks uttered hardly a peep about the Alabama decision. Why was the issue buried? Because the “poll” in Alabama and 19 other states didn’t match the template put forward by those who wanted the amendment to be crushed. Their bias against the family is breathtaking.
Dr. Dobson goes on with his analysis, but the final issue is the Senators who voted against this Amendment. Some of them include: Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island, Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minnesota, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire. All are a virtual whose-who in La-La Land. The list includes RINOs (Republican In Name Only) such as Chafee, Snowe, Gregg, and the media whore maverick, John McCain. It is because of these Senators that the decision of what defines a marriage does not belong to the people where it belongs, but instead is in the hands of a few radical liberal unelected judges. I hope the American people will hold these Senators responsible for their votes, though I will not hold my breath.
It seems that only in a few circumstances, the American people hold Congress in low regard, but like their own legislators. I wish I could explain the disconnect, but I can’t. Until the American people are will to hold their elected Congressmen and women and Senators responsible for their votes, we can be sure the unelected judges will continue to run roughshod over the will of the people.
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As a person who believes in the Constitution, and everything (except slavery) that the founding fathers stood for, I am appalled at this post. The Document specifically staes the duties and obligations of the Congress, such as declating war, which they did not do as required by the law of the land; unless of course an amendment was added that I am not aware of. Nowhere, not in any of my readings of the Document have I read that it is any of governments business to interfere with marriage, whether it is between man and woman or woman and woman or man & man.
Seems neither party pays much attention to the law of the land.
Oh, contrare. Perhaps you need to re-read the US Constitution. It reads as follows:
Section 8 gives Congress the power for the general welfare of the people of the US. And then comes the ‘necessary and proper clause:
As you can tell, this part of the Constitution is very broad and open to interpretation. The Supreme Court has in the past given Congress a lot of leeway in determining what constitutes the ‘general welfare’ of this country. This is one area where Congress has always been given broad discretion.
Let’s hear what the guy who wrote the document has to say about what that means. All of you socialists/facists want to interpret it as a way to rob the citizens and grab more power.
Veto of federal public works bill
March 3, 1817
To the House of Representatives of the United States:
Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled “An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,” and which sets apart and pledges funds “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense,” I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
“The power to regulate commerce among the several States” can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms “common defense and general welfare” embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared “that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
James Madison,
President of the United States