At the Thanksgiving Family Forum co-hosted by NOM recently, our President Brian Brown asked Ron Paul if he would support a federal marriage amendment -- here is a video of the exchange:

Here is our unofficial transcript of the exchange:

Brian Brown: “Hi, I’m Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. My first question is for Dr. Paul. We’ve heard from others of their support of a federal marriage amendment. Would you support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman?”

Ron Paul: “No, I have taken a position that I would not support. I support DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act but I would prefer under our system of laws that all these problems be taken care of in a constitutional manner which I would defer to the states. But actually I would go even a little bit further; me personally, my personal beliefs, although it’s not likely to be achieved in my lifetime, is traditionally throughout our Judeo-Christian history, it was usually dealt with by the church and I think the reason that we fight and fume over this is because we have too much government everywhere so I would say that the church should make this decision. That’s the most important place to determine marriage.

When you think about in the Old Testament when the God that led the people out of Egypt was not a king, they didn’t have a king and then when they got to the holy land, they had judges they didn’t have kings dictating and ruling but the family dealt with this and the family dealt with marriages but they had a judge to determine this. Matter of fact, when the people came to Samuel and said ‘look we need more rules and more laws, we want more government to tell us what to do and we need more of this.’ Samuel was old and ready to retire and he says ‘no that’s a bad mistake you don’t need more rules and more government, you don’t need this, the government will overreact and today I think this is what has happened to us. We have deferred to the federal government. We have way too much government. We should go in the other directions.

Before you know it the next step; what if the next step is wouldn’t it be wonderful if the United Nations defined marriage? I don’t want to go up that way, I want to go back down all the way to the family and the church. Believe me, it would a happier and more peaceful world if we went in that direction rather than asking the government and asking the king to solve all these problems. We need the family to deal with it and we can take our message and learn something from the Old Testament how there was such a strong emphasis on the patriarchal society and the disputes settled by judges rather than looking for big government.”