In a Senate committee hearing on a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Senators Al Franken and Patrick Leahy demolished testimony by Tom Minnery of the antigay organization Focus on the Family.
Yesterday the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee had a widely-reported hearing on the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), a proposed bill which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). RFMA will not compel states to recognize same-sex marriages, but will grant to legally married same-sex couples the same federal benefits that are already enjoyed by the opposite-sex married couples. (See full text of H.R. 1116.)
One of the witnesses called by Senate Republicans to testify against the bill was Tom Minnery. Minnery, a cousin of Alaska Family Council’s Jim Minnery, is senior vice president of Government and Public Policy for the Colorado Springs-based national antigay group Focus on the Family (FOTF).
Mr. Minnery didn’t do too well. In fact, when answering questions by two senators in particular — Al Franken of Minnesota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont — Minnery showed just how weak FOTF’s arguments are against equality for same-sex married couples.
As described at ThinkProgress,
During this morning’s Senate DOMA hearings, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) destroyed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s argument that children are better off with opposite-sex parents by demonstrating how Minnery misrepresented an HHS study. The study — which Minnery cited to oppose marriage equality — actually found that children do best in two-parent households, regardless of the parents’ gender.
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