By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League
July 10, 2013
RALEIGH — North Carolina’s Marriage Protection Amendment, passed in 2012 with 61 percent of the vote, is now under attack from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We expected a lawsuit in the wake of the Supreme Court’s late June rulings on same-sex marriage, but we didn’t expect the ACLU to try to modify an existing suit,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League.
“The good news is that the Supreme Court did not find a state marriage amendment unconstitutional in either case it ruled on,” he added. “We believe our Marriage Amendment is constitutionally sound, and we know it represents the will of the people. Let us pray that the courts rule appropriately.”
The ACLU announced Tuesday that it has asked the state Attorney General to allow the organization to amend Fisher v. Smith, its existing lawsuit on so-called “second-parent” adoptions. Filed in Greensboro last year, the federal case involves six same-sex couples who are demanding the right to adopt one another’s children. Currently, state law allows adoption by married couples or by single individuals, but not by unmarried pairs.
“The ACLU is attempting to short-circuit the legal process…,” said Tami Fitzgerald, director of the N.C. Values Coalition. “The suit they are trying to amend is totally unrelated to the Marriage Amendment.”
She said the current case has been in the legal system for a year, a judge is now considering the state’s motion to dismiss it, and that allowing the ACLU to amend the suit would be a miscarriage of justice.
The ACLU made similar legal moves in Pennsylvania and Virginia this past week, part of what it is calling its “post-DOMA, post-Prop 8 plan for winning the freedom to marry nationwide.” If the Attorney General does not allow the organization to expand the suit, the ACLU said it will petition the federal court to do so.
John Rustin, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, pointed out in a press release that “While the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal DOMA, it emphasized that marriage laws are up to the states.”
Fitzgerald echoed that observation.
“The voters of North Carolina deserve to have the last say on marriage, not the federal courts,” she said in a statement issued Wednesday, adding that there is “no legal basis for a challenge of the sort the ACLU seeks to bring.”
Dr. Creech said the Christian Action League joins the N.C. Values Coalition, the N.C. Family Policy Council and a number of other pro-family organizations across the state that will continue to defend the state’s Constitutional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.
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