HONOLULU — A proposed “civil unions” bill, which failed to pass a Hawaii Senate committee Thursday, was a failed attempt to skirt the state’s constitutional amendment protecting marriage, according to attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund. The bill failed to obtain the necessary number of votes to be forced from the Judiciary and Government Operations Committee for a full Senate vote.
“Politicians should never impose a system that knowingly undermines what’s best for a child. Civil unions are simply one of several strategies that have been used to do that in a desperate attempt to fabricate same-sex ‘marriage.’ We are pleased that the committee did not further that attempt,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “Advocates of same-sex ‘marriage’ can’t win at the ballot box, so they have pursued other strategies that take the question of marriage out of the hands of the people of Hawaii.”
“You can’t talk about civil unions or domestic partnerships without talking about same-sex ‘marriage’ because there really isn’t any difference. The goal is the same,” said ADF-allied attorney James Hochberg of Honolulu, who previously served as one of seven commissioners on the Hawaii Commission on Sexual Orientation and the Law. “It’s a detour that leads to the same destination.”
In an
editorial written for The Honolulu Advertiser last month, Hochberg explained that “in both California and Connecticut, the existence of full domestic partnership and civil union schemes provided a platform for those states’ supreme courts to judicially impose same-sex ‘marriage.’” He pointed out that a major proponent of the Hawaii ‘civil unions’ bill stated that the long-term goal was to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
www.telladf.org www.domawatch.org