REFERENDUM I: Haggard has taken no position on the Colorado ballot measure that would grant many spousal rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples.
AMENDMENT 43: Would cement the existing one-man, one-woman definition of marriage by placing it in the state constitution.
Haggard said in January that a coalition of conservative leaders, Coloradans for Marriage, intended to back an amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman and go no further. “The amendment supports marriage but doesn’t stand against anything,” Haggard said. “We want to say marriage is something, and we also want to give the freedom for citizens or legislators if they want to give similar benefits to other people.”
In 2004, he supported a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage.
“Our primary argument is that marriage is a foundational institution in society that should be protected,” Haggard told The Associated Press. Once marriage between a man and a woman is protected, legislatures can do what they want to provide benefits for others in civil unions, he said.
QUOTES:
“Homosexual behavior is immoral; in other words, it’s not the very best. And that’s not my opinion, either,” he told Bill Moyers in a PBS documentary in 1993. Moyers asked for his source. “The Bible,” Haggard said.
In 2005, he applauded a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law. “I believe the church has to teach against immorality, but I don’t believe it’s the role of the state to spend money to find out what consenting adults do in their bedrooms and then haul them off to jail,” Haggard said.
