News Release
For Immediate Release:  July 19, 2011
Contact:  Diane Gramley  1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355

Two Unequals Can Never Be Equal — Same Gender ‘Marriage” Can Never Be Real Marriage

(Harrisburg) — As the effort to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) intensifies, the President has jumped on the bandwagon and expressed support for the “Respect for Marriage Act” in yet another attempt to garner favor with homosexual activists.  The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide traditional values group, notes that it is in the best interest of the government to support, strengthen and respect marriages which produce well-rounded families and citizens.  Thus, it is in the best interest of the government not to support counterfeit marriage.

During consideration of DOMA in 1996, the House Judiciary Committee’s report to accompany the bill laid out four governmental interests that undergirded the legislation: (1) defending and nurturing the institution of traditional, heterosexual marriage; (2) defending traditional notions of morality; (3) protecting state sovereignty and democratic self-governance; and (4) preserving scarce government resources.  

“The findings of the committee hearings in 1996 have not changed.  It is in the best interest of government to defend the institution that is foundational to any successful society and not work to undermine it.  The Obama Administration’s support of redefining marriage to include motherless and fatherless “families” is ludicrous,’ commented Diane Gramley, President of the AFA of PA.

In December 2008 a large-scale federal survey of child health and development showed that children and adolescents are less likely to exhibit problems in school or at home if they live with both biological parents and attend religious services regularly.  The report was written by Nicholas Zill, Ph.D. and Philip Fletcher, Ph.D.

What Maggie Gallagher said back in August 2003 still applies, ” The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.”

“Traditional marriage matters because gender matters.  There is  a growing body of research in fields as varied as biochemistry and neurobiology that points to a clear conclusion that there are profound differences between men and women; differences that affect the way the two sexes raise and interact with children.  Two men or two women viewed as “parents” will not be able to offer what a child needs.  In the end same-sex so-called ‘marriage’ puts the desires of adults before the needs of children.  Children are the losers in this societal experiment,” concluded Gramley.

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