John Rice Carter: “Today, we gather in this honorable chamber, and as we gather, there is an attack taking place on the basic building…”

“Today, we gather in this honorable chamber, and as we gather, there is an attack taking place on the basic building blocks of our society, the traditional family. Since the dawn of civilization, a family has consisted of a union between a man and a woman. In a civilized society, that union has historically been joined through a legal process we call marriage. Mr. Speaker, you can go anywhere on this earth or here in the United States and wake somebody up from a dead sleep and ask them to define marriage, and they will tell you that it is a union between a man and a woman. Yet, today, we are dealing with living with a court ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts which tosses aside the history of traditional marriage. This judicial activism, better called social engineering, flies in the face of legal precedent, and as The Washington Post shockingly stated, 'is done by judicial fiat.' Not a single State of the 50 States in this union have any legislation or a constitutional amendment which changes the definition of marriage. This assault on traditional marriage continues as legal challenges are joined in most all the States of this Nation. Mr. Speaker, I have had the dubious distinction of having presided over the dissolution of 20,000 marriages in my career of public service.”