Joseph R. Pitts, October 24, 2003

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, said in The Politics that the "family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants." The association of different families led to the creation of communities and town and so on. For Aristotle the family was the basic building block of a society.

For many of our world’s major religions, marriage and the family are basic to civilization.

The Koran states that God "has made for [man] the marriage relationship" (25.54). The Jewish Torah states that both man and woman are made in the image of God and "for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." The Christian New Testament tells us "each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

In all of their diversity, the world’s many cultures are unanimous in their belief in the fundamental importance of the nuclear family. Child Development Specialist Alice Sterling Honig once said that the "family is the first school for young children, and parents are powerful models." That’s a statement with which we can all identify. There is a special cultural significance in family that means a lot for our children.

Right now, however there is a movement made up of a few activists who want to impose a different definition of family on our society.

Poll numbers show that the majority of people believe marriage should continue to be defined as the union of one man and one woman. In March, sixty-two percent of those surveyed by Wirthlin Worldwide agreed with this statement -- "Marriage is the union of a man and a woman."

The Wirthlin poll found that overwhelming numbers of Hispanics (63%) and African-Americans (62%) support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage from such lawsuits. In addition, working class and low income Americans (63%) are also among some of the strongest supporters of a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.

The conviction that marriage is vital to the health of our culture has animated efforts to protect children, promote stable families, and rebuild inner city communities. Healthy families are the key to unlock our nation’s full potential. And the only way to revive at risk communities.

Around the country, community leaders have decried the significant rise in out-of-wedlock births, absentee fathers, and broken families as a primary cause of the endless cycle of poverty and violence that grips our cities today. Social statistics have shown that children who grow up with two parents -- mom and dad -- who live at home, are married, and are engaged in the lives of their children are more successful and less likely to be abused or engage in risky behaviors like drug use, binge drinking, and promiscuous sexual relationships.

Understandably, those of us who believe marriage should be protected for this reason, reject the argument made by some that any effort to promote and protect marriage is the latest strategy by right-wing fanatics to discriminate and impose morality on the rest of the nation. To suggest that somehow supporters of marriage, some of whom marched alongside the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and sat in the wrong section on buses in the 1960s, are engaged in a campaign to discriminate is patently absurd.

Most Americans agree that marriage has verifiable benefits on our society. This consensus cuts across racial and economic lines.

The real issue is that courts are being used by a small group of activists to redefine marriage and family. This strategy has been so successful that the highest court in the state of Massachusetts is about to overturn that state’s marriage laws. That ruling will present a threat to every other state.

The courts, not legislatures, are being abused to change the idea of marriage over and above the voice of the majority of Americans and without open and honest debate among elected leaders. While this might seem harmless enough, its practical effect will be to destroy the foundation on which we rely to continue our civilization and raise our children.

The value of marriage and in family is based on the very idea that they are sacred, they hold a value set apart from anything else in our culture. Even apart from religious faith, Aristotle identified the family as the foundational element of any culture. To break this foundation apart threatens civilization itself.

The majority of Americans support marriage and want to preserve it. I look forward to working with you to do that.

Congressman Joe Pitts represents the 16th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.