LANHAM, MD – With the U.S. Senate scheduled to vote in less than a month on the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment, Republican Lt. Governor Michael Steele on Wednesday addressed a group of clergy from across the country gathered at the Hope Christian Church in Lanham for a “marriage amendment workshop.”  According to the Baltimore Examiner, Lt. Governor Steele said “Marriage is not a purely human institution...Marriage defines not only the relationship between a man and a woman but also their journey through life.”  The article later stated: 

Steele said men and women of faith should be concerned, take pause and reaffirm the sanctity of marriage rather than be told who should be able to marry.

“They should not be brow-beaten into thinking something that goes counter to what the people in the community aspire to,” Steele said.

“Our Lt. Governor officially kicked off his anti-gay U.S. Senate campaign this week,” said Equality Maryland's Executive Director Dan Furmansky. “No one is surprised that he has chosen to attack gay and lesbian Americans under the guise of “protecting” marriage.  This is a transparent Karl Rove tactic designed to sway voters into thinking he is running something other than an empty shell of a campaign.”

Furmansky added: “According to Mr. Steele, ‘they [people of faith] should not be brow-beaten into thinking something that goes counter to what the people in the community aspire to.’  Does that then mean he would have supported the Southern states that "defined marriage" in their constitutions as “two Whites, Negroes or Mongolians” circa 1948, after “activist judges” began striking down interracial marriage bans as unconstitutional...against popular opinion?”

Civil rights communities and many religious communities oppose writing discrimination into the Constitution, including the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, United Farm Workers Union, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Episcopal Church U.S.A., Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, United Church of Christ, and Central Conference of American Rabbis.
 
“Somewhere I read that ‘God is no respector of persons’,” said Rev. John Crestwell, Minister of Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Camp Springs, Maryland. “We have to find a way to not allow our private opium to dictate public policy. Many faith leaders want a Lt. Governor who represents all of the people, not some of the people.”