Report: Marshall Newman town hall meeting

I attended the Marshall Newman town hall meeting this morning, hosted by the Tidewater Libertarian Party. Speaking on behalf of the supporters was Virginia Beach attorney Gary Byler and on behalf of the opponents was Norfolk attorney Michael Hamar, both UVA law grads. While the intent of the forum was good, I think hrconservative and I could have done a better job of representing the two sides in the debate.

Before the forum started, there was a bit of social time and breakfast. At the table where I was sitting, some folks started saying how they planned to vote on the amendment. The lady sitting next to me said she was voting yes and I asked her why. She deferred to her husband, saying that he was the one who liked to debate this stuff. So I asked him why he was voting yes. He said that marriage should be between one man and one woman. I asked him about the rest of the amendment. He said he hadn’t read it. He then went further and said that gay people should be able to do unions, but not marriage. Finally, he said, we really don’t need the amendment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get time to tell him that the reasons he just gave me were reasons for voting NO, because the forum started up.

It didn’t get any better from there. In his opening statement, Byler gave his reasons for supporting the amendment. His number one reason, accounting for, he said, 85% of the reason he supported it, was to keep government from further entanglement in private affairs! That’s right – he used the argument of right to privacy as his primary reason to support the amendment. Activist judges (which we know are abundant in Virginia) could expand the definition of marriage to include the right of brothers and sisters to marry and the amendment would keep them from doing that. Byler’s other reasons for supporting the amendment were that he believes we should have tolerance for the majority, those people who are in traditional marriages (accounting for 10% of his reason for supporting) and finally, because of tradition (5%).

In his opening statement, Hamar presented three reasons for his opposition to the amendment. Invoking Thomas Jefferson, he said there is a right to religious freedom. His second reason lies in the US Constitution, which says that no state shall pass laws that abrogates the right of contract, which he believes the amendment does. Finally, he is concerned about the unintended consequences.

There was time for 12 questions, and no, I’m not going to list them all. Byler kept saying that the right to contract in the Constitution is sacrosanct and that the amendment won’t change that. Hamar disagreed, saying that the amendment opens the door for contracts to be broken. Hamar kept hammering home that the amendment is about the Family Foundation trying to impose their definition of Christianity on the rest of us.

Asked directly about private affairs, Byler didn’t answer the question. He said the purpose of the second part of the amendment is an attempt to close the door on further litigation, but admitted that the definition of the “effects of marriage” as used in the amendment would be decided by the courts. He seemed to not really buy the argument of activist judges. When asked, he said that he doesn’t like them on either side and that it is better to decide things outside of the court.

At times, it seemed that Byler was making the case for voting against the amendment more than voting for. He said he is not looking to limit anyone’s right to contract, and agreed with the questioner that certain rights of marriage – such as Social Security survivor benefits – cannot be conferred by contract. He suggested that people go to work for companies that do provide partner benefits. I guess that is one answer. He even went so far as to say that government cannot afford to bring all of the partners into a system like Social Security.

Of course, there was a question about the “lifestyle.” The question was why should society endorse a lifestyle that is barren, a lifestyle that has a shorter lifespan? Hamar stayed on his point of imposing moral values. Byler sidestepped and only said that there are groups aligned in the Yes camp that he doesn’t agree with.

The question of children and domestic violence was answered by Hamar well. He pointed out that by including all unmarried couples in the amendment, we can expect to have more custody issues before the court. He brought up the Vermont case. And he told people to look to Ohio for what happens in domestic violence cases under a similar amendment. Byler talked about what he thinks domestic violence laws should be.

Let me say right now that neither of these people were there in an official capacity, representing neither the supporters nor the opponents of the amendment. These two gentlemen were there as individuals giving their personal opinions on why they supported or opposed the Marshall Newman amendment. This was not clear to me before I went to the meeting but became increasingly clear as the forum went on. The lack of depth of knowledge on the issues surrounding the amendment was disappointing. As the result, the answers to the questions posted by the attendees were, at best, superficial. I seriously doubt if anyone came away from the meeting with much more information than what they went in with or that anyone changed their position as the result of this exchange.