Jul 16, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

Gay activists breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday when the Senate rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay couples from marrying, preventing Congress from approving the measure this year and forcing its backers to rethink their strategy.

In a development viewed as a setback for its Republican supporters — including President Bush — the Senate voted 50 to 48 against bringing the amendment up for a direct vote following more than three days of heated debate.

Democrats had initially agreed to a direct vote on the amendment itself but changed their minds after Republican leaders announced they wanted to open up the proposed constitutional amendment to changes on the Senate floor.

Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.C.), said changing the wording on the floor would be akin to “amending the Constitution on the fly” and refused to go along with the request.

“The Republican leaders didn’t want a direct vote on the amendment that they’ve been pushing for more than a year because they knew many of their own members would vote against it,” said Winnie Stachelberg, legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign, the national gay rights group that coordinated lobbying efforts against the amendment.

Only 40 backed FMA
Capitol Hill observers with ties to both parties said a direct vote, rather than the procedural vote, would likely have resulted in only about 40 senators backing the proposed constitutional amendment on its merits.

The procedural vote, on a motion to end debate, fell 12 votes short of the 60 needed to bring the proposed constitutional amendment up for a direct vote. The Senate vote fell 19 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass a constitutional amendment.

The vote followed an intense lobbying campaign from advocates on both sides of the contentious issue.

President Bush, who announced his support for the amendment in late February, joined conservative Republican leaders and an alliance of anti-gay and conservative religious organizations this week in urging the Senate to pass the amendment to protect “traditional marriage” from attack by “activist judges.”

A coalition of gay civil rights groups, mainline civil rights organizations and religious groups mounted a vigorous campaign to oppose the amendment. HRC, the nation’s largest gay political group, opened a “war room” headquarters on Capitol Hill, where its lobbyists coordinated efforts against the measure, known as the FMA.

The primary strategy of those opposing the FMA was to question its necessity, given the Defense of Marriage Act that permits states to refuse recognition of gay marriage, and to criticize Senate Republicans for wasting the waning days of the congressional session on what they called a politically motivated effort.

“The Senate’s vote is a well-deserved repudiation of this effort by President Bush and the Senate Republican leadership to divide the nation for political advantage,” Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

“There is absolutely no need to amend the Constitution on this issue,” Kennedy said.

During the Senate debate, Kennedy expressed dismay that Senate backers of the FMA cited the ruling last year by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalizing same-sex marriage as one of the key reasons for the need for a federal constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Kennedy and other Democratic senators argued that the Massachusetts court ruling would not lead to legalized gay marriages in other states, saying the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The act also defines marriage under federal law as a union only between a man and a woman. President Clinton signed that act, known as DOMA, and most Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in Congress to vote for it.

Both sides point to courts
Senators opposing the FMA also argued that the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, which requires states to recognize contracts and legal agreements made in other states, would not force states to recognize gay marriages from other states. The senators said longstanding court rulings have held that states don’t have to recognize marriages performed in other states if those marriages conflict with a state’s “public policy.”

Supporters of the FMA, led by Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), the amendment’s lead sponsor, said the Massachusetts court decision demonstrated that “activist judges” would move to force gay marriage upon the nation, even though the majority of the people and nearly all elected legislators oppose it.

Allard rejected the Democrats’ arguments about DOMA and the “full faith and credit” clause, saying state and federal courts — and even the U.S. Supreme Court — would likely overturn DOMA and ...