MN: Several legislators who want to ‘protect marriage’ are divorced, records indicate

[marmar]

from the Minnesota Independent:




In testimony before Minnesota Senate and House committees last week, religious leaders and representatives from religious right organizations cited single-parent families and a skyrocketing divorce rate as reasons to protect marriage from being redefined to include same-sex couples by “activist judges” and “handfuls of legislators.” And GOP members rebuffed efforts by DFLers to include a ban on divorces in a proposed ban on gay marriage. However, a number of the legislators who say they want to protect marriage appear to have been divorced.

The Minnesota Family Council, a main proponent of the anti-gay marriage amendment, calls the effort to pass the amendment “protecting marriage” and organized testimony at the Minnesota Capitol in favor of bringing the issue to the ballot in 2012. The testifiers, who were all affiliated with religious denominations or groups, often said that divorce greatly weakened marriage and that same-sex marriage would spell its death knell.

Bishop John Quinn of the Diocese of Winona lamented the “high rates of fatherlessness” in American society and the “unfair burden of parenting alone” as reasons to protect marriage from gay and lesbian couples.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage said, “Previous generations of social experimenters have caused unimaginable misery for millions of people. Particular people advocated the policies that led to today’s 50 percent divorce rate and 40 percent out-of-wedlock childbearing rate. None of these people has ever been held accountable,” she said. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://minnesotaindependent.com/81166/minnesota-gay-marriage-divorce-republicans