NEWS RELEASE:
February 3, 2005
Contact: Tom Henry, Olympia Communications Group, 360-413-9300
Families Northwest to file brief in Washington DOMA Supreme Court Case
(Olympia) - Families Northwest of Bellevue will file an amicus curiae brief with the Washington State Supreme Court tomorrow concerning the legal challenge to the state’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case March 8th.
Jeff Kemp, President of Families Northwest, said, “we’d like to add to the argument that the state has compelling interests in maintaining the definition of marriage as being the union of one man and one woman for the sake of children.
“It is fundamental that societies need to reproduce themselves by having children and it is also fundamentally true that the best interests of children are usually served when they are raised by their own mother and father in a healthy environment,” he said. “Research shows that marriage encourages and provides this environment.”
The brief will introduce a ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals just last month in which the court wrote, “The key question in our view is whether the recognition of same-sex marriage would promote all of the same state interests that opposite-sex marriage does…If it would not, then limiting the institution of marriage to opposite-sex couples is rational and acceptable…”
The brief also argues that marriage furthers the state’s interest in minimizing out-of-wedlock births and therefore protects children.
“When mothers and fathers don’t take responsibility for their children, government and the taxpayers are left holding the bag,” Kemp said. “Children suffer when that happens because they don’t have the benefits of living in a healthy home with their moms and dads.
“Marriage links both parents and both genders in a bond that research shows creates generally more positive outcomes in emotional, academic, social, and health aspects of the child’s life.
“Children in our state living in a single parent home are more than four times as likely to live below the poverty level than children of married parents,” Kemp said.
Kemp cited statistics from the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) indicating in 2002 alone Washington’s Medicaid program paid for more than 75 percent of out-of-wedlock births at an average cost of $7,000 per delivery.
Welfare expenses, food stamps, additional Medicaid expenses, subsidized housing and other benefits available to children in poverty add to those costs.
“The state has compelling interests to prevent redefining marriage as well as to support and help to strengthen it,” Kemp said.
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