From the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal:
The marriage issue didn’t play a major role in the 2014 midterms, but activist courts overturning state laws and lawsuits threatening the rights of those who disagree with redefining marriage may very well make the issue a top one in 2016.
Since 1998 and across the early 2000s, millions of Americans voted at the state level to define marriage as the union of a man and woman and more than 38 states have such laws on their books today. Yet with state and district courts overturning those laws across the country and the Supreme Court punting on the issue earlier this fall, a number of questions increasingly come in to play:
- Should the definition of marriage be decided state by state, and how does that then affect federal law dealing with marriage?
- What happens if, as we’re seeing happen, the courts take the issue out of the hands of individual states and bans their right to define marriage in their state and also forces them to recognize the marriage laws of other states?
- How do we protect the religious freedoms of business owners, churches and others who don’t want to participate in same-sex marriages–a problem we’re already encountering?
These are questions potential presidential candidates should be prepared to answer. A sampling of statements from leading GOP contenders shows most have some homework to do. All say they favor marriage being defined as the union of a man and woman–good–but in light of recent events, few offer policy or legal prescriptions for how they would actually promote and defend that position or deal with the increasing number of related issues raised above.
Below, in alphabetical order, are some of the most talked about contenders for the 2016 GOP nomination, in their own words…
Read more: DailySignal.com
