Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp responded to the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decisions Wednesday by announcing plans to introduce a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution.
“This radical usurpation of legislative and popular authority will not end the debate over marriage in this country. Congress clearly must respond to these bad decisions, and as a result, I plan to introduce the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to amend the United States Constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” Huelskamp announced in a statement.
On Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and dismissed the appeal of a federal judge’s decision on California’s Proposition 8, thereby clearing the way for same-sex marriages to resume in the state.
“With these two decisions, a very narrow 5-4 Court majority has substituted its personal preferences on marriage for the Constitutional decisions of the American people and their elected Representatives,” Huelskamp said.
“In doing so, five activist justices have short-circuited the democratic process. The Court had neither logic nor constitutional principles in mind: in the DOMA decision, the majority claims states have the sole responsibility to define marriage,” he continued. “But in the Proposition 8 case they discarded the votes of 7 million Californians who voted to defend traditional marriage.”
Huelskamp further took issue with the decision’s potential affect on children, saying the “ruling further undermines that ideal” of a one mother, one father family.
He added that the court’s decisions did not overrule the states’ power to decline to recognize same sex marriage and did not “fabricate a constitutional right to homosexual ‘marriage.’”