Norton at News Conference with Civil Rights Leaders Opposes Marriage Amendment - June 6, 2006
Norton at News Conference with Civil Rights Leaders Opposes Marriage Amendment
June 6, 2006
Washington, DC--Statement of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) at a press conference with the Human Rights Campaign, civil rights leaders and Members of Congress regarding the Federal Marriage Amendment:
“Surely the marriage amendment, which bars marriage by loving couples, is more appropriately titled the anti-marriage amendment. I am offended by the annual attempt to deface our Constitution by inserting an amendment that denies the rights of our gay, lesbian and transsexual brothers and sisters. I am offended as an American whose constitutional amendments have always extended, never denied, human rights. I am offended as a Black American whose full citizenship was denied in our Constitution until corrected by the 14th Amendment. I am offended as a woman who was denied even the vote until the 19th Amendment gave us the vote 144 years after the founding of the Republic. I am offended as a mother whose marriage and two children afforded me a family who have been indispensable to my life. And I am offended as a constitutional scholar-- but encouraged in the belief that the American people will never allow our founding document, so revered in the world, to be so mocked, and in turn, to mock our basic principles.”