Federal Court Upholds Hawaii Marriage Amendment

A federal court on Wednesday upheld a Hawaii law defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman, WORLD News Service reports. Hawaii passed a marriage amendment in 1998 with 69 percent of the vote, and Wednesday's ruling affirms that amendment, according to Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Dale Schowengerdt. "The people of Hawaii adopted a constitutional amendment to uphold marriage, and the court rightly concluded that the democratic process shouldn't be short-circuited by judicial decree," Schowengerdt said. However, the fight for marriage in Hawaii is not over -- in 2011, legislators passed a bill creating same-sex civil unions, part of a strategy by same-sex marriage advocates to challenge state marriage amendments and laws.