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+ Catholic Marriage Petition + |
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(Note: This transcript was edited by Professor Robert George, Ph.D.) Prof. George: Pleasure to be here Raymond. Thank you. Raymond: In the spring of 2001, you were involved with the drafting of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Now I'm interested in the circumstances of the drafting - what provoked this? Prof. George: Well, it was becoming clear that through judicial activism around the country, particularly in the state courts, marriage was likely to be redefined - it had already been redefined in Hawaii by the Hawaii Supreme Court, although the people of Hawaii reversed their Supreme Court by amending the state constitution to restore the traditional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. But it was clear that this was going to continue to happen in state judiciaries around the country and the federal judiciary might be involved as well, and so people who agreed that marriage should continue as it has traditionally been defined got together with a view to settling the issue at the Federal Constitutional level, through the normal processes of Constitutional amendment Raymond: Now, why take this type of action. I mean, by all opinion, this is really the doomsday button, if you will. It's the most extreme measure to pull back - put the horse back in the barn here. Prof. George: An amendment is necessary because legislation-whether at the state or federal level-would be insufficient. Legislation is subject to judicial review, and it is clear that there's a very low-level of tolerance for the traditional understanding of marriage among liberal judges. There is a statute that Congress enacted several years ago, signed by President Clinton, called the Defense of Marriage Act, and that statute on its face would protect the institution of marriage at the federal level and would protect the right of states that wish to retain the traditional definition of marriage, to retain it. But, that legislation itself - the Defense of Marriage Act - is subject to judicial review - it could well be declared unconstitutional by the Federal Courts and ultimately, by the Supreme Court of the United States. Raymond: Yeah, Bob Barr, who sponsored that legislation - a Republican from Georgia - has said that you really don't need the amendment because the Defense of Marriage Act hasn't been contested. But you feel this is a preemptive measure that needs to be put in place, because that probably will get thrown out? Prof. George: I don't know for sure that it will be thrown out - it will certainly be contested - and I think that there are at least even odds it will be thrown out - perhaps better than even odds that it will be thrown out. It's very clear to anyone who bothers to look at the law review literature, or in the literature that's produced by activist organizations who are opposed to the traditional definition of marriage, who would like to redefine it, that an assault on the Defense of Marriage Act is coming. The Act is repugnant from the point of view of people who would like to alter the definition of marriage. So, the attack will come, it will happen, and there's a very good chance it will be thrown out. So, I don't agree with Bob Barr about that at all. Raymond: Let's look at the language here of your amendment, and it says that, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status, or the legal incidents thereof, be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups." Now, the language itself has been generating some concern in recent days. Some groups - supporters of the amendment - saying it would not prohibit civil unions. Your thoughts on that? Prof. George: Well, that is correct. It will not prohibit civil unions. It leaves the question of civil unions or domestic partnerships to the democratic process - to the state legislatures and to the Congress. It preserves the institution of marriage - it defines marriage nationally as the union of a man and a woman - but as to the incidents of marriage - the rights, privileges, benefits, responsibilities attaching to marriage - as to the question of whether those will be altered or reassigned - authority is left there where it always has been under our regime of matrimonial and family law - and that is with the state legislatures. So, the proposed amendment doesn't attempt to change that. What it would do however, in the first sentence - the one you read - what it would do with respect to civil unions, domestic partnerships, and other arrangements that would reassign the incidents of marriage - it would assure that any reassignment cannot be based on the recognition, or presumption, or presupposition of a sexual relationship between the parties. If the state legislatures believe - if any particular state legislature believes - that there are needs that people have by virtue of their living arrangements and mutual dependency - needs for insurance coverage, needs for hospital visitation privileges and so forth - it remains within the power of legislatures under this amdnement to provide for that. But, it must do so in a way that respects the institution of marriage and does not predicate the reassignment of benefits of any type on the existence of a sexual relationship. If people have needs because of interdependency, or living arrangements, they will have those needs without regard to whether they are in a sexual relationship with each other. Two men or two women, a man and a woman, whether they're married or not, may have these needs. Two elderly sisters who are living together, two widows who are living together, a grandfather and a grandson, where the grandson is taking care of an elderly grandfather, may have the same needs for insurance or hospital visitation privileges. Anything like that could be provided so long as it did not treat the parties as married, that is as a sexual unit - it wouldn't have to exclude people who are involved in a sexual relationship from eligibility from benefits, but it could not exclude people who are not in a sexual relationship, perhaps because they cannot lawfully be in one - such as widowed sisters or something like that - it cannot exclude some people from those benefits. So, this amendment would ensure that benefits follow need and are not predicated on non-marital sexual conduct or relationships. Raymond: So, the real point, then, of the amendment is to protect the institution of marriage - the definition of marriage - you're really not looking to hamper the law in other ways? Prof. George: That's right. We're trying, to the extent possible - given what courts have already shown themselves to be willing to do through judicial activism - to the extent possible, we're trying to retain the status quo, including the status quo with respect to the allocation of authority to make decisions in family law and matrimonial law, so state legislatures would still retain authority over most of the decisions having to do with marital benefits. Raymond: Let's talk for a moment about your reasoning. In some of the articles I've read, you define marriage at its legal core as a sexual union. How is that important - that reasoning - to this amendment? Prof. George: Well, it understands marriage the way marriage has traditionally been understood, and that is, as a reproductive, sexual unit. The law treats a couple as married by treating the couple as a sexual unit. That's why we have a law of consummation. Marriages are not complete until they're consummated. A marriage may be valid - may occur - is recognized by the law, even if one or both of the spouses are infertile. Marriage is not finally recognized - is not immune from annulment - unless it's been consummated and it's consummated by sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is the human behavior by which the behavioral conditions of procreation are fulfilled. Now, those behavioral conditions can be fulfilled even if the non-behavioral conditions happen not to obtain, because of age, infirmity of one of the spouses - the law's always recognized this. But, here the law treats the bodily union of spouses as essential to what marriage is - it treats the persons who are being married as complete human beings - as body, mind, spirit, and not as emotions or spirits or self-consciousnesses residing in bodies - where the bodily behavior is disengaged in some way from the rest of the human being. So, it doesn't treat marriage as simply an emotional unity which can be enhanced if the couple - or if it's more than a couple, three or five or however many people - would like to have it enhanced by sexual conduct. The law doesn't treat it that way at all. The law treats sexuality not as incidental to marriage but as intrinsic to what marriage is, because the body is not incidental to the human being, the body is part of the personal reality of a human being. A human being is a unity, not a set of feelings or emotions, or a center of consciousness, residing in a mass of physical material. Raymond: Haven't these recent cases, though, particularly - and I want you to walk us through the Massachusetts case - the Goodridge vs. the Massachusetts Dept. Of Public Health case - because of those decisions, hasn't that already eroded the understanding of marriage that you just explained to us? Prof. George: Oh, yes, it certainly has. In a way, it has abolished marriage as it has traditionally been understood. No sense can be made of the core of the traditional law of consummation, for example, if the law goes in the direction of the Goodridge case. That's one of the reasons, I think, that the law really does have to be restored and we have no way to do that other than by Constitutional Amendment. If we don't amend the Constituiton, then the link between procreation and marriage will be finally and decisively broken. The link between sexuality and marriage - something intrinsic and not merely incidental - will be thoroughly undermined. We'll be living with an entirely different legal understanding of the meaning and value of human sexuality and of the institution of marriage. Raymond: Now, that case - the Massachusetts case - essentially invalidated - declared unconstitutional - the marriage law. Do you expect to see that decision replicated in other states? Prof. George: I think it is likely, indeed, almost certain. Cases have been brought in my home state of New Jersey, and in Indiana and Washington state.,. I think there is also a case pending in Arizona, or perhaps that case has already been resolved in favor of upholding the state's marriage law., I'm not quite sure about that,. But it is clear that the issue will eventually have to be settled one way or another at the national level. There are different ways that that can be done and it can go in different directions. Perhaps, we'll settle at the national level on a Massachusetts-type dispensation with a completely revised understanding of marriage in place. I hope that that won't happen, but it's possible. Or, perhaps we'll settle the issue nationally by restoring the traditional understanding of marriage while leaving questions of domestic partnership and civil unions - so long as they're not predicated on sexual conduct - with the state legislatures. But, one way or another, we're going to have a national resolution of this issue. To some extent, I think, what Lincoln said of slavery is true, in this case. Lincoln said, "It will eventually be all one way or all the other." It can't go on with part of the country having slavery and part of the country not having slavery. The same is true here. It can't go on with different states having radically different definitions of marriage. It will eventually be one way or all the other. Either marriage will be preserved everywhere, or it will be lost everywhere. Raymond: Prof. George, since it is the definition of marriage that you are attempting to protect here, and the institution as we know it today, the question rises - and many have made it in recent days - how does the marriage of two men or two women somehow invalidate or undermine your marriage, or my marriage? Prof. George: Well, this is a poor argument. It's the same argument that was made by the apologists for polygamy in the 19th century. People who were attempting to introduce polygamy in the United States said: "Look, having a polygamous family living next door should make no difference to a husband and wife who prefer to live monogamously. They can still practice monogamy if they choose and raise their children to believe in it. No one who believes in monogamy is hurt by people in their community who want to practice polygamy." Fortunately, our forebears didn't fall for this argument. They recognized that the law is a very great and profound teacher. The law of marriage inevitably shapes the public understanding of marriage. It promotes the conception of marriage that prevails in the law, and discourages competing conceptions. If the law were to permit polygamy or polyamory (group marriage) , it would shape the public's understanding of marriage in line with a view of marriage in which polygamy or polyamory are perfectly valid. The same is true of same-sex "marriage." The law cannot be neutral on questions of this nature. It will teach one thing or it will teach the other. It is true that law reflects culture, but it also significantly shapes it. The content of the law of marriage matters. Law and culture are in a relationship such that they affect each other in profound ways. We have enough experience now with human beings - with human nature - to know that that is true. So, just as the law of marriage as traditionally constituted, promotes one understanding of sexuality, family, children, and marriage itself, a law that is revised in the direction that the Massachusetts court would revise it, would promote a very different (and ery much worse) understanding. It would remove the intelligible basis of an understanding of marriage as necessarily between two, and only two, people. If marriage is detached from sexual union and procreation-if it is understood as merely relational and utterly detached from procreation and the biological union of spouses - if the biological dimensions of marriage drop out and it's judged to be simply an emotional union-then we can give no account of why marriage should be the union of two and only two persons-not three, or five, or seven people. After all, three or five, or seven people can unite emotionally and desire to have sexual relations with each other. Now, this point is not original with me, nor is it a point that only people on my side of the debate make. Candid, honest people, who are in favor of the revision of marriage, such as David Chambers, in an article in the University of Michigan Law Review, and my own colleague at Princeton, Dirk Hartog, who's a very distinguished historian of marriage in the United States, have made the point that the logic of altering marriage to embrace same-sex couples would also have to lead to the idea that polygamists or polyamorous marriages should be valid. If marriage is meant simply to satisfy people's desires relationally-if it's not linked to the biological union of spouses as a procreative unit-then the logic does take us there. Now, that's not a slippery slope argument, you notice. Sometimes it's depicted as a slippery slope argument, but it is a much more powerful form of argument than that. It's an argument about the principles that define marriage as what it is. It's an identification of what marriage is, and of what cannot be marriage, at the level of principle. It tests the proposal for same-sex "marriage" against the logic of our core understanding of marriage as the exculsive union of two and only two persons. Same-sex "marriage" fails the test. Raymond: Some have made the argument, the cultural tide of accepting homosexuality - accepting gay couples - that that has already turned - turned a few years ago - and, how do you now convince the American people, that this amendment is not discriminatory towards gays? Prof. George: Well, all you can do is make the argument - that's all anybody can do. Of course a lot of people want to obscure the argument; but, I think that it's incumbent on anybody who's a person of good will - irrespective of the side of the question you're on - to make your best arguments, and to invite people on the other side to make the best counter arguments that are available to them. It's also important to see that the damage that's been done to the institution of marriage did not begin with homosexual relationships or the legal recognition of such relationships, or with the debate over the definition of marriage itself. It really began with the sexual revolution that altered people's understandings of marriage and family, before homosexuality became a central issue. It manifested itself probably most clearly and damagingly, in the growth of divorce, and in particular, in the development of the law in the direction of no-fault divorce. Now families can be broken up pretty much at the will of either spouse (even against the wishes of the other), with damage to children that simply hadn't been anticipated. Many people believed - and looking back on it, it's easy to see why believed - it seemed sensible at the time - that if a couple are living together, and raising children, and aren't happy with each other, and are quarreling all the time, shouldn't they be able to get out of the marriage, and wouldn't it be better for the children? Well, we now have enough sociological data after 25 years experience with this to realize that it's not necessarily best for the children, and that the institution of marriage itself has been altered as a result of the availability of No-Fault divorce. As a result of changes in the law (and please remember here the point I made earlier about how law and culture influence and shape each other) people entering marriage, enter into something different from what they were entering into when No-Fault divorce was not an option. You see, then, that there has already been some alteration of the public's understanding of marriage as an unforeseen result of well-intentioned but damaging changes in the law. So I think we have to go in one direction or the other here. If we go down the road of revising marriage as the Massachusetts Court would like to do, then that will simply ratify this destruction of the institution as traditionally conceived. I think if people want to go back to an institution of marriage that actually is sound and healthy, then this amendment is a beginning, but it's by no means the end. Something's got to be done about the divorce problem in this culture. And something has to be done, I think, on the legal side to undo the damage that's been done by the regime of No-Fault divorce. Raymond: So, this amendment really is, in your mind, part of preserving the culture, if you will, preserving the moral climate of the culture? Prof. George: Well, there's nothing more central to the culture, or to its moral climate, than the institutions of marriage and the family - these are the fundamental units of society. Everything depends upon them, including good citizenship. Governments demand citizenship, demand good citizenship, of people - they want us to be law-abiding citizens in democracy. Government wants us to participate in the enterprise of democratic, constitutional government. But, government is limited in what it can do. Government depends on families to raise children into adults who are law-abiding, decent, critical, self-critical, intelligent, understanding, and willing to be engaged in civic affairs. That's the role that the family plays and it cannot be played by any other institution. Raymond: How do you argue with the media images. We see Rosie O'Donell and her spouse and their children, and, thinking of other celebrities and their children in gay partnerships, gay marriages, if you will. They say they are loving. They are families. They are supportive. They are civically engaged. How are they less so from what we're talking about? Prof. George: There are single people raising children. There are grandmothers doing their best to raise children. There are older siblings who are left to raise younger children. There are children who are being raised by groups of people living together. People do the best they can, and achieve varying levels of success. Jill and Sally, who may or may not be involved with each other sexually, may be doing a pretty good job of raising a child, but so may be Tom and his six wives on a farm in Utah or Nancy, Janice, and Phil in a menage a trois in Manhattan. Their success in educating and socializing children and keeping them physically healthy should not affect our judgment as to whether their relationship should be approved or legally recognized as marital in nature. No sexual arrangement can be marital if by recognizing it as such we undermine the intelligibility of the moral norms that structure marriage as a sexually exclusive and monogamous union. The logic of the thing matters. A polyamorous group cannot constitute a marriage no matter how well the children they may be rearing together do on their SATs or how polite they are. To "expand" marriage to include polyamorous unions is to fundamentally alter the institution; indeed, it is to abolish it and replace it with something else. What is true of polyamory is by the same logic true of same-sex unions. Raymond: What
would you say with the hundreds - I imagine now, thousands - of these
gay marriages already happening in San Francisco, in Massachusetts - how
do you get the genie back into the bottle? What do you say to these folks
as you present your amendment and the Congress moves on it? Doesn't the
Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution demand that all states
recognize these marriages? Raymond: You think they have a case? Prof. George: Yeah, I think there is a case - it's a case that can be made both ways - it's not a clear-cut thing. As a lawyer, I know how I would make the case against Full Faith and Credit recognition of out-of-state marriages that contravene public policy in a given state. I would make the argument on the basis of what is called a "public policy exception" - that if a form of marriage violates the public policy of a state, that state doesn't have to recognize out-of-state marriages that are in violation of the public policy. Raymond: I see. Prof. George: However, that exception has been interpreted by the courts fairly narrowly and given decisions of the Supreme Court recently, it's not at all clear that the United States Supreme Court would - at the end of the day - reject the Full Faith and Credit claims being made on behalf of Massachusetts same-sex couples. So, it really could go either way. Now, DOMA - the Defense of Marriage Act - strengthens the hands of states that wish to retain man/woman marriage as the norm in their states, but the Defense of Marriage Act could itself be declared unconstitutional as I said earlier in the interview. So, it's not clear which way it's going to go. The Constitutional amendment, of course, would settle it and would render the dispute moot. Raymond: Okay.
And we want to talk about how successful that amendment may or may not
be. We're going to take a quick break. When we return, we'll learn more
with Professor Robert George and the Federal Marriage Amendment. Stay
with us! Raymond: Welcome back to The World Over - Live. We're once again joined by Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and author of the Federal Marriage Amendment - Robert George. Prof. George, I want to pick up where we left off. Many critics - and I'm hearing this more and more - are saying this is a religiously-motivated amendment, and your participation, that of Gerald Bradley, and others, because of your Catholicism, they say this is coming from your personal morality in an attempt to impose that on the nation. You would respond how? Prof. George: Well, we need to bring our moral judgment to bear in making our public decisions. We need to do that as citizens and we need to do that as public policymakers, if we're legislators, or in the executive branch. There's no avoiding that. There's no such thing as moral neutrality when it comes to questions of justice and the common good. The law will embody moral principles. We have to use our best judgment as citizens or as legislators to get the moral judgments right. Now, that's always been the true in the United States. The civil rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, the women's suffrage movement, these movements were suffused with moral purpose. They should have been. They rightly were suffused with moral purpose. They were also led in many cases - in most cases - by people of profound religious faith whose moral judgments, of course, were in part - a significant part, in the case of, for example, Martin Luther King - derived from their religious traditions, rooted in their religious convictions. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, there's much that is good about that. Now, we have to respect religious freedom. That's a core ideal in America. But we needn't - shouldn't - remove moral judgment from the picture because, at the end of the day, we rely on it to get things right. Questions of justice are questions of morality. Any appeal to justice - to human rights - is a moral appeal. Those appeals are going to be connected to people's religious views, and that's fine. We certainly wouldn't want to disenfranchise Catholics, or Evangelicals, or Muslims, or Mormons, or people of any faith, or no faith, because their moral judgments - their views about justice and human rights - are integrated with their religious views. So, I think this claim about an imposition of religious values, and so forth, is a red herring, and it would disappear immediately if people just thought about our history, particularly the history of civil rights, of abolition, and of women's suffrage. Raymond: Are you concerned about our political discourse - and this is more of an academic question - the direction of the political discourse, in so far as all opinions or positions, contrary to this secular elitism, if you will, is derided as sectarian and the church trying to impose morality on the rest of us? Are you concerned about the tenor of those charges in recent days? Prof. George: Well, of course, this gets ginned up whenever the Church moves in - or any particular church. Again, it doesn't matter if it's the Catholic Church or a Protestant Church, or the Mormon Church. This kind of thing gets ginned up whenever people - especially people in the elite sector of the culture - object to the position that the church has taken. When they do not object to the position that the church has taken, they praise the church. For example, Martin Luther King and the religious people of his day who supported him were praised for their prophetic witness - they were rightly praised during the civil rights era. No one said, well, these Christians are trying to impose their morality on the rest of the culture, or if anybody did say that, it certainly wasn't people who were supporting the civil rights movement. It was people who were opposing the civil rights movement. So, again it seems to be, Raymond, a red herring and really nothing that needs to be taken seriously. There's just too much hypocrisy running through it to be detained by it. Raymond: Do you fear that the Federal Marriage Amendment could become overly politicized? There are reports that the GOP is using this primarily to peel off Catholic voters and Black votes, because a sizable majority of the Black community is opposed to gay marriage and would support the amendment. Your thoughts on that? Is that a concern for you? Prof. George: Well, I don't see that there's something dirty or wrong about politics. When you have a dispute on an important cultural issue - whether it's slavery, abortion, whether or not to go to war, capital punishment, civil rights, the nature of marriage - whenever you have a big dispute in a culture, it's got to be solved one way or another. Now, one way not to solve it is with arms. We don't want civil wars. We fought one, as Lincoln said, over slavery. Of course, it was understood in some circles as a war over secession, but as Lincoln said in the second inaugural address, we all know that somehow or another, at the base of this is the dispute over slavery. Well, we don't want to resolve our moral disputes that way. So, how do we resolve them? We resolve them democratically. And, how does democracy work? Democracy works by debate. We need a free, full, and fair engagement of views, of people on both or all sides of the issue making the best arguments available to them, listening to counter arguments from the other side, inviting people into the argument, and then, working through the normal processes of democratic self-government, including the processes of constitutional amendment, to set things the way they think they ought to be as a matter of justice and right. That is politics - in a democracy, that's what politics is. There's nothing dirty or wrong about it. Raymond: And, coalition building is part of the game. Prof. George: Of course, coalition building is part of the game. Now, it's very important to be honest though. People on both or all sides of these disputes must be rigorously honest and I would think that religious people - I would certainly say to my fellow Catholics, it's very, very important in conducting the debate, not simply to win, but to be honest and fair and just in the way the debate is conducted. I hope that people on the other side would respect those basic principles as well. Just because we disagree on the outcome of this or that particular issue, including something as profound as marriage, doesn't mean that we should disagree about the need for fairness, truth-telling, honesty and so forth. Raymond: A vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment is slated for July 12th - or the debate on July 12th and I think a vote on the 15th. Your thoughts on the speed with which this has been moved onto the calendar? It's not going to committee. They're bringing it right to the floor. Prof. George: Well, of course, this is an idea that has been debated for many years. I mean, before the Federal Marriage Amendment was even drafted finally in 2001, there were long discussions and debates. It's been going through the courts. It's been argued about in state legislatures. This is a process that has been going on since Hawaii - since the Hawaii Supreme Court first moved to redefine marriage in that state, in the early 1990's. So, this is not happening at a breakneck pace of speed. People on my side of the debate have been trying to get Congressional action on this for a number of years, but until the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts, even people who were broadly supportive of the traditional institution of marriage did not believe that a move towards Constitutional amendment was necessary. We were told that we should wait until it became clear that - without Constitutional amendment - marriage would be revised by the state courts. Well, that has now happened. And now, that it has happened, those justifications for waiting have gone by the side of the road and it's time to act. So, I'm glad to see Congress acting on it. Raymond: It is reported that the Senate does not have the votes at this point to pass the amendment. What are you hearing and how confident are you that they will get those votes? Prof. George: I'm hearing that the Senate does not have the votes to pass them right now, that there are quite a large number of senators who have not made up their minds. That's why we have legislative debates. They're not supposed to be charades, and sometimes they're not charades. Sometimes people listen, hear the arguments on the competing sides, and make up their minds based on those arguments. Senators need to discuss with their constituents where people stand on the issue. The debate simply should not be in the Halls of Congress - in the House and the Senate - but out there in the country and our representatives need to be talking with our citizens about that, getting their input. At the end of the day, each senator or representative has to make the decision - a personal decision - as to what is right in his judgment - but it is important for people - for representatives - to inform themselves first, and part of that is to discuss with constituents where the constituents see right and justice as lying in this case. I'm sure they're going to do that. So, we'll have to see what comes out of the debate. If it does not pass in July, I suspect that we will see it come up again later in the year, or early in the next year and there will be an election intervening and perhaps in November, either at the Presidential level, or out in the state elections - in the Senate and House elections - there will be debates, and those debates may shape the outcome in the future. Raymond: Let's talk for a second about a letter you sent to the bishops in the U.S. on June 3rd, basically you were apprising them of the amendment, laying the groundwork for what this would mean, and the implications. Have you heard any response from the bishops? Prof. George: I have not heard any response back from the bishops. Our letter went to all the bishops of the United States, in time for them to have it when they got together for deliberations in Denver. I'd like to think that they took onboard what I said with my co-author, Prof. Gerard Bradley of the University of Notre Dame Law School, and are thinking about how they best can contribute to the effort to preserve the institution of marriage. Raymond: Roy Kuhn was on the show last week, and he said that in his conversations with them, they had committed to a grass roots campaign. Are you confident that they could begin a grass roots campaign at this late date, or are they talking about when this goes to the states for ratification? Well, I'd like to see them begin a grass roots campaign at the earliest possible moment. I'd like to see them begin it now. I hope that that will happen. I think that even now, they can get some work done before mid-July when there's an initial vote in the Senate on the constitutional amendment, but even if it doesn't pass then in the Senate, it will come up again as I said a moment ago, and the grass roots efforts should continue until passage in the Senate and the House of Representatives is secured, and then the issue would go to ratification in the states. What's required, Raymond, are two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress - in the House and the Senate - and then ratification by three quarters of the states in their state legislatures. Now, that takes time. Constitutional amendments are not enacted overnight. It will take time and it will take a tremendous effort. The bishops can be part of that effort, especially at the grass roots, and there will be time for them to do it. I hope that they get engaged. The time to start though, is now.
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