By Terry Vanderheyden
HOUSTON, PORTLAND, November 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Texas voters overwhelmingly supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex “marriage” Tuesday. Last week an Oregon judge upheld that state’s ban passed last year.
Over three-fourths of Texas voters voted yes to Proposition 2, making it the 19th state to alter their constitution to guarantee that a court-engineered change to the traditional definition of marriage would not be possible.
“Texans know that marriage is between a man and a woman, and children deserve both a mom and a dad,” said Texans For Marriage leader Kelly Shackelford, according to an AP report. “They don’t need a Ph.D. or a degree in anything else to teach them that.”
Meanwhile Marion County Circuit Judge Joseph Guimond upheld Oregon’s Measure 36 Friday – the constitutional amendment voted into existence last November by Oregon voters. Guimond ruled that the change was an amendment, not a revision of the constitution, as court challengers of the amendment claimed.
Basic Rights, the homosexual activist group that launched the challenge, said they will appeal the decision. Oregon passed the amendment last November by a 57 percent majority.
In related news, a Maine initiative to overturn a homosexual hate crimes law enacted by lawmakers earlier this year failed. The state added an amendment to its human rights legislation that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation; 55 percent of Maine voters were against repealing the law. The new law was broadly worded to incorporate transvestites and transsexuals into the new prohibitions.
The Canadian Catholic Civil Rights League warned in April 2004 that numerous assurances the new criminal charges will only apply to the most obnoxious or severe critics of homosexual behaviour seem rather weak in light of efforts to limit the freedom of commentators around the world. It provided examples of developments in Spain, England, Ireland, Belgian and Sweden as reason for serious concern that religious persecution seems to always follow passage of homosexual, so-called “hate crimes” legislation.
See Related reports
Catholic League Notes Results of Homosexual Hate Crime Law in Other Countries as Warning to Canada
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/apr/04043006.html
Canadian Senator Cools Warns Colleagues of “Danger and Enormity” of Homosexual Hate Crime Bill
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/oct/03102803.html
Same-Sex “Marriage,”“Hate Crimes,” and the New Totalitarianism
By Michael O’Brien
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/New%20Totalitarianism.pdf
Homosexual Activist Group Behind hate Crimes Legislation Admits Position
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/oct/02102304.html