Putting Discrimination into the Constitution

Putting Discrimination into the Constitution

May 19, 2006

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and would also likely prohibit civil unions and domestic partnerships as well. S.J. Res 1 — the so called "Marriage Protection Amendment" — passed the committee on a 10-8 party-line vote after Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA), who said he was "totally opposed" to the bill, voted to let it come out of committee. Instead of focusing on the issues most pressing to the American people — like Iraq, gas prices and stem cell research — the Senate instead is focusing on writing discrimination into the Constitution by pushing a divisive bill that growing numbers of Americans oppose.

• The Senate proceedings should have been conducted in public. Yesterday’s Judiciary Committee meeting was moved from its usual meeting place to a closed hearing room that “does not even have enough chairs for every senator on the committee to sit." Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said in a statement after leaving the meeting, "Today's markup of the constitutional amendment concerning marriage, in a small room off the Senate floor with only a handful of people other than Senators and their staffs present, was an affront to the Constitution.” And although the bill passed yesterday's committee hearing in secrecy, it is unlikely to gather the necessary votes it needs (2/3 of the Senate, then 2/3 of the House and 3/4 of the 50 states) when it goes before the full Senate on June 5.
  
  
• President Bush and conservatives in Congress are attempting to write discrimination into the Constitution to score political points with their base. In his 2004 campaign, President Bush used gay marriage as a political wedge issue to divide the nation and rally conservative supporters, and after his victory he pledged to drop the issue of gay marriage. However, with just six months until the 2006 mid-terms and with approval ratings hovering about 30%, the President and Karl Rove are once again "coordinating with Congress on social issues such as a ban on gay marriage.
  
  
• Backers of the bill are flip-flopping on their “conservative” principles by pushing this legislation at the federal level. The language of the proposed amendment says that marriage "shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman" and bars the federal and state governments from allowing any other form of marriage. As religious bodies must be free to decide what constitutes religious marriage under the tenets of their faith, the states should be free to decide whether to recognize civil marriage for their gay and lesbian citizens. Some conservatives, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), oppose the constitutional amendment, with McCain stating, "It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them."