Marriage Protection Amendment

MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT -- (House of Representatives - September 30, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 801, proceedings will now resume on the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 106) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

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Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. More to the point, I thank the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), for his extraordinary moral courage in leading this critical issue to the floor of this Congress and leading the debate today.

I also congratulate the original author of this legislation (Mrs. Musgrave), who even as a freshman has left already an indelible imprint on the national debate in this legislation.

I rise today in support of the Marriage Protection Act because I believe, as the overwhelming majority of the American people have ever believed, that marriage matters; that it was ordained by God, established in the law; that it is the glue of the American family and the safest harbor to raise children.

We have heard again and again throughout this afternoon that marriage is under attack by judicial advocates. But I rise today to say that marriage matters to children. And we need not look to the theoretical. Marriage in Scandinavia and in Holland is dying since the advent of same-sex marriage over the last decade in those countries.

As a result, a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are now born out of wedlock. In some parts of Norway, as many as 80 percent of first-born children and two-thirds of subsequent children are now born out of wedlock. And we know ever since my colleague from Indiana, Dan Quayle, first said it, marriage matters to children. Children born out of wedlock have statistically been proven to be more than twice as likely to be poor, to give birth outside of marriage themselves, to have behavioral or psychological problems, and fall into every form of social malady that besets our children.

Marriage matters to children.

I rise today to say against this extraordinary phalanx of legal attacks in virtually every jurisdiction of the country that I commend the leadership of this Congress and, to no less extent, the President of the United States of America for saying that marriage matters enough to find space in the Supreme Court of our land to defend it.

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Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in the wake of, I think, a very important question by my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays): What are we afraid of? And the gentleman from Connecticut knows that I admire him and have great affection for him and the integrity with which he does his work, but I would like to answer that.

My colleague, we are afraid of the decline of marriage. We are afraid that what has happened in the last 15 years in the Netherlands since the advent of same-sex marriage is going to happen in America, and that our children and our society will be harmed as a result. As Dan Quayle first said on the national stage some 14 years ago, we know that marriage matters to children. Children born outside of wedlock are more than two times more likely to fall into every form of social malady that besets our kids.

The experience in the Netherlands is undeniable. Since the advent of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and in Holland, the decline of marriage has been from 95,000 to 82,000. As Dutch academics wrote in their newspapers there recently: "Over the past 15 years, the number of marriages has declined substantially. The same period also witnessed a spectacular rise in the number of out-of-wedlock births. In 1989, one in 10 children were born out of wedlock, roughly 11 percent; by 2003 that number had risen to almost one in three children."

That is what we are afraid of, Mr. Speaker. We are afraid of the decline of marriage and the attendant harm to the American family that will undeniably follow. Marriage matters. And we come into this hallowed place today to stand by that institution knowing that we are informed by our core values that it matters and that it is central to our society, but also knowing the experience of our neighbors in Europe has been that when we change the definition of marriage, we begin the decline and ultimately the abolition of marriage as we know it.

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