President Bush called for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages this morning, an expected reaction to recent court decisions that opened the way for some areas of the country to issue marriage licenses for same sex couples. The Constitution requires that all states recognize that laws of other states – so a same sex marriage in Massachusetts would be legally valid in any state.
“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” Bush said in a televised speech from the White House, referring to recent events in Massachusetts and California.
The social conservatives that make up Bush’s core constituency have been calling for such an amendment since last November’s decision by the Massachusetts’s Supreme Court that declared that the state could not deny anyone the right to a legally sanctioned marriage. Massachusetts was required to begin issuing marriage licenses for same sex marriages by May.
A decision by San Francisco to begin issuing marriage licenses on Valentine’s Day accelerated matters even further. Attempts to block the issuing of marriages in court have been unsuccessful to date.
Constitutional amendments must first be approved by both houses of Congress by a two-thirds margin, and then ratified by at three-fourths of the state legislatures. That means that at least 38 states must agree to the amendment before it can take affect.
“The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage,” Bush said, alluding to the possibility that Vermont style “civil unions,” same sex arrangements that provide the legal benefits of marriage without using the word would not be forbidden by the amendment.
"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," wrote the judges who had written the majority opinion in Massachusetts’s Supreme Court case, denying a request by the state Senate that “civil unions” be afforded to same sex partners instead of marriage.
The 27th Amendment, preventing members of a congressional session from giving themselves a raise during that same session, passed both houses of Congress when it was introduced - in 1792. It wasn't ratified until 1992, when Michigan became the 38th state to ratify the amendment after a series of controversial raises in Congress during the 80s.
An amendment seeking to prohibit same sex marriages would likely become the 28th Amendment if passed and ratified.
The amendment will likely be a controversial issue during this year's elections - the Democratic frontrunner in their primaries, Sen. John Kerry, was one of 14 members of the Senate that voted against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that attempted to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
Bush cited the Defense of Marriage Act a number of times in his speech, noting "that there is no assurance that the Defense of Marriage Act will not, itself, be struck down by activist courts. In that event, every state would be forced to recognize any relationship that judges in Boston or officials in San Francisco choose to call a marriage."
"Furthermore, even if the Defense of Marriage Act is upheld, the law does not protect marriage within any state or city," Bush noted in his call for the amendment.
