Sam Brownback: “I will yield the floor when he arrives at a timely point. I want to get started on this debate. Time is short and the…”

“I will yield the floor when he arrives at a timely point. I want to get started on this debate. Time is short and the issues are important. I rise to speak in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment. I chair the Constitution Subcommittee from which it came through. I am also on the Judiciary Committee from which it came through. This is a critically important topic. It is about, fundamentally, two issues. No. 1, it is about who is going to define marriage in America--not whether marriage is going to be defined. It is about who is going to define marriage in America. Is it going to be defined by the courts that have started this debate or is it going to be defined by legislatures and legislative bodies across the country? That is No. 1. No. 2, and at the very center of this, is how we will raise our next generation of children. That is fundamental to this debate--how we raise that next generation of children. We are going to talk a lot about that. I have a number of statistics that we are going to share. It hinges on what happens in that first debate. Who is going to define it? Defined by the legislature? Defined by the Judiciary? And No. 2, what happens to the children? It was the central question of Senator Moynihan while he was in this body before he passed away, that we should always be concerned about centrally how you raise that next generation of Americans.…”