WASHINGTON - Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, praised the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upholding the rights of states to legally recognize and protect the meaning of marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.
?The Sixth Circuit has upheld the rights of the citizens of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee to protect and defend marriage as the unique relationship of a man and a woman,? Archbishop Cordileone said. ?We are particularly heartened by the Court?s acknowledgment of the reasonable arguments for preserving the true definition of marriage and by the Court?s respect for the self-determination of states on this issue.?
The Court?s opinion included an argument grounding marriage in the complementarity of man and woman, saying: ?It is not society?s laws or for that matter any one religion?s laws, but nature?s laws (that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative.
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