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Kerry: People born homosexual, Constitution guarantees same-sex couples legal benefits

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Appearing in a taped interview on MTV March 30, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said he believes people are born homosexual and that the Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the legal benefits of marriage.

During the 30-minute program Kerry fielded a series of questions, including three on homosexuality. Host Gideon Yago asked Kerry if he believes people are “born gay” or if they “choose to be” that way.

“I think it’s entirely who you are from birth, personally,” Kerry said. “Some people might choose, but I think that it’s who you are. I think people need to be able to be who they are. … I have a friend who was married for many years and then the marriage dissolved and he came out and he announced that he was gay, and he lived this life of tension and of great difficulty.

“And I don’t think that’s a kind of choice. I think that’s being who you are. It’s in your system. It’s in your genes.”

Contrary to Kerry’s assertion, scientists have failed in finding the so-called “gay gene.”

Kerry then added that Americans have a right “to be who they are” and that “we are all God’s children.”

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The show featured MTV viewers asking questions via videotape. One of them asked Kerry why he wouldn’t support same-sex “marriage” instead of civil unions. Kerry said he was “sensitive to that argument.”

“My feeling is that what is important is equal protection under the law,” he said. “[The Constitution’s] equal protection clause, I think, pertains to the rights you give to people, not to the name you give to something, so I’m for civil unions. That gives people the rights: the rights of partnership, the rights of inheritance of property, the rights of taxation and so forth — those kinds of treatment that are equal”

Kerry drew a “distinction” between “what we have traditionally called ‘marriage’ between a man and a women and the legal benefits of marriage.”

“Now, it’s just a belief that I have,” he said, before touting his record on homosexual-related legislation.

Apparently seeing an inconsistency in Kerry’s position, Yago then asked, “If that is the case, and people are born gay, why would there have to be a distinction? I mean, under the Constitution isn’t everyone, regardless of race, color, creed, sex or sexual orientation, guaranteed equality?”

“Yes,” Kerry answered, “they should be guaranteed the rights, and that’s what I have … said. Rights should be guaranteed. But what is distinct is the institutional name or whatever people look at as the sacrament within a church or within a synagogue or within a mosque as a religious institution, there is a distinction. The civil state really just adopted that. It’s the rights that are important, not the name of the institution.”

The issue of same-sex “marriage” has crept into the presidential campaign, with President Bush proposing a federal constitutional amendment protecting the traditional definition of marriage, and Kerry opposing it. Kerry says it should be a states’ rights issue. Amendment supporters counter by saying that without an amendment, federal courts will legalize same-sex “marriage” nationally.
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For more information about the debate over same-sex “marriage,” visit
http://www.bpnews.net/samesexmarriage [3]