Right Wing Agrees: Marriage Amendment All About Politics

The House yesterday failed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw marriage for gay and lesbian couples with a vote of 236-197, well short of the required two-thirds majority, and now that the amendment has failed in both the chambers of Congress, Religious Right leaders are pointing to the November elections. "We want to identify these 187 members of Congress who believe that homosexual marriage should be legal," American Family Association President Don Wildmon says. "Every one of them will be running for re-election this fall, and we want to let their constituencies know how they voted.” James Dobson says that voters “will remember how this vote went down,” according to Dobson’s Focus on the Family news service. “If people continue to vote their values and elect people who represent those values, we’ll get more votes in the next Congress than in this one,” adds Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.