MARRIAGE LIMITS

A bill to ban same-sex marriages easily passed the Missouri Senate on Friday and is in the House during this, the final week of the 1996 session of the General Assembly. If House leaders are serious about final passage, there is plenty of time for floor action before scheduled adjournment at 6 p.m. this Friday.

The issue is being forced on all 49 states by action in the courts of Hawaii. That Hawaii Supreme Court is widely expected to be preparing to rule, perhaps as soon as soon as July or August, that authorities must issue marriage licenses to three same-sex couples who have sued for this remedy. Were this to happen, the issue is forced on the other 49 states by the full-faith-and-credit clause of the U.S. Constitution. That section states that all states must grant full faith and credit to the legal acts -- marriages, divorces and adoptions, for example -- of each of the other states. States having on their statute books a clear statement of public policy, such as Senate Bill 895, would avoid this eventuality.

It isn't hard to recognize why this has become a hot issue over the last few months. For thousands of years, the unchallenged understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition has been that marriage is an honorable institution, divine in origin, legally sanctioned by the state and consisting of a union between one man and one woman. Simply stated, the issue is, like families themselves, about children, their health and welfare and their nurturing. Healthy families, then, are the building blocks of a healthy society.

This understanding reflects a societal consensus so broad, so deep and so ancient that until now, no codification of it had been thought necessary. Search the Missouri statutes and you'll come to the section that lists those attempted marital unions the framers of our laws long ago declared "presumptively void" -- nonexistent in the eyes of the state. Included in these prohibitions are brothers marrying sisters, aunts their nephews, uncles their nieces, cousins, etc. But again, no one had thought it necessary to include in this category "persons of the same sex."

The fact that it now becomes necessary to make this explicit is one sign of the moral and cultural confusion that unfortunately has taken hold in too much of our society today. In this regard it is worth noting who precipitated today's controversy. We didn't arrive at this battlefield in the culture war because homophobic lawmakers were looking for an issue. Radical gay and lesbian activists seeking to remove a crucial cultural guardrail have forced the issue and brought us to this pass.

SB 895 contains the following statement of public policy: "The state of Missouri is committed to fostering the institution of marriage between a man and a woman. To this end, the state of Missouri shall not recognize any marriage other than between a man and a woman." The Missouri House should pass it without delay this week.