Marriage and government ‘by the people’ at stake in Marriage Protection Amendment

By staff - Jun 5, 2006 - 2

NASHVILLE, Tenn., June 5, 2006—Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, commented today about President’s Bush’s support of the Marriage Protection Amendment, following the president’s speech at the White House.

“The president of the United States has once again illustrated by his Saturday radio address and today’s speech that he understands what’s at stake in the Marriage Protection Amendment debate: two absolutely critical elements of our society,” said Land.

“The first is the definition of marriage. Marriage is the basic building block of human society. If we allow the federal judiciary to redefine it, it will shatter the definition beyond recognition and it will have disastrous effects on marriage, on children and on society. Our forefathers reserved for the American people, not American judges, the right to determine social policy for the nation. And when the judges get it wrong, our forefathers gave us a method to give the judges further instruction on how we would be governed. It’s called a constitutional amendment.

“The second issue the president clearly understands is that not only marriage, but also ‘government of the people, by the people’ and ‘for the people’ is at stake here. The American people in significant majorities have made it amply clear they do not want same-sex marriage. Yet, judiciaries at the state and federal level are trying to force upon the American people something they find abhorrent.

“Are we going to continue to have ‘government of the people, by the people’ and ‘for the people,’ or government of the judges, by the judges and for the judges? The president believes it ought to be the people.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.3 million members in over 43,500 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C.

Further Learning

Learn more about: Family, Marriage, Sexual Purity, Homosexuality

2 comments (post your own) feed

1 On Jun 7th, 2006, at 9:25am, Bob Mitchell wrote:

As predicted by so many, we lost.  Once again the forces of evil have pushed America farther down the slippery slope toward oblivion.

Now what must we do?  What CAN we do?

2 On Jun 7th, 2006, at 11:29am, Jim Fite wrote:

On June 7th Mr. Bob Mitchell wrote in his comment two questions concerning the MPA and its temporary defeat.  He asked, “Now what must we do? and What CAN we do?” First of all, the answer to both questions is the same - PRAY!  We CAN pray and we MUST pray!  The next thing we can do is get involved.  We CAN and MUST talk to our elected officials and voice our opinion on this issue.  We have to keep this issue alive and “in their face”.  Also, when presented with the opportunity, we need to sign petitions that promote the MPA and that will be presented to these elected officials.  If they are unwilling to take a positive stand for the MPA, then we need to let them know that, come election time, we will do our best to see that they will be deprived of the opportunity to vote on anything ever again.

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