COMMENTARY
Constitutional amendment protecting marriage critical
By Cam Cavasso
Sen. Daniel Inouye supported homosexual marriage with his July 14 vote against a proposed amendment to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. How can a senator from Hawai'i oppose saving traditional marriage?
Traditional marriage between one man and one woman is again at risk in Hawai'i and the nation because of recent federal court decisions. The Federal Marriage Amendment is the only sure protection for marriage we have. Without the amendment both the Defense of Marriage Act and our Hawai'i laws and Constitution may be overridden by federal judges.
After hearing of Inouye's support for homosexual marriage on July 14, I decided to stand for election to the U.S. Senate to replace him.
The people of Hawai'i are a moral and culturally decent people. He is not representing the moral values of Hawai'i.
If we have homosexual marriage, we will lose our prosperous and enjoyable Asian marriage/ tourist industry because our Asian guests are offended.
As a former three-term Hawai'i state legislator, I worked hard as an organizer to bring about our Hawai'i constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and woman.
Sixty-nine percent of the people of Hawai'i voted overwhelmingly to amend our state constitution against homosexual marriage in 1998.
I recently completed a poll, and today 65 percent of the people of Hawai'i are still against homosexual marriage. In Hawai'i, over 500,000 people attend churches regularly that believe the Bible is the word of God. The Bible has historically been the best-selling book in history.
We as churchgoers in Catholic, Protestant and Mormon churches are taught the following Scriptures:
Jesus Christ said in Matthew 19:4, 5: "Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning, made them male and female and said for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
Also we are taught and believe the word of God in the epistle of St. Paul the apostle to the Romans in 1:26-28: "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due."
In Scandinavia, where homosexual marriage is allowed, the institution of marriage has broken down. Two out of three couples with children are not married. Many children do not know their own fathers.
If the family is broken down any more in Hawai'i, then we will not be safe in our own homes. Children need a father and a mother.
The highly respected Christian leader Billy Graham said, "If God can destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for its sins of homosexuality, then he must do it to the United States if we don't repent and stop this sin."
Inouye and Reps. Ed Case and Neil Abercrombie voted to stop this same-sex marriage amendment so that liberal judges in the U.S. Supreme Court and in appellate courts in San Francisco can overrule our constitutional amendment here in Hawai'i and bring in homosexual marriage.
They are deceiving us when we are told that we do not need a constitutional amendment. They know liberal judges will impose homosexual marriage on us. They also know that the majority of the people across this nation will say no to homosexual marriage when given the chance to vote.
Cam Cavasso is the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.
