House vote on marriage amendment falls short of two-thirds_101804

Posted: 10/15/04

House vote on marriage amendment falls short of two-thirds

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)–The U.S. House of Representatives has followed the Senate's lead, defeating a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban marriage–and, arguably, marriage-like benefits–for same-sex couples.

A House version of the Federal Marriage Amendment proposal failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote for passage, though it did receive a majority of 227 to 186. Twenty-seven Republicans joined most Democrats in voting against the amendment, while 36 Demo-crats crossed the aisle to vote in favor of it.

A similar proposal failed a procedural vote in the Senate in July, when supporters of the marriage ban failed to muster a simple majority.

Many observers had predicted the House vote would fail, and the earlier Senate failure led many Democrats to accuse Republicans of playing election-year politics with the bill. Even if it had passed the House, its defeat in the Senate means the amendment almost certainly would have gone nowhere until next year.

Many opponents of the proposal said it was designed to make election-year life difficult for moderate Democrats who oppose the amendment on principle. Prominent Religious-Right organizations have announced they will give heavy weight to House members' votes on the amendment when compiling election-year “scorecards” to hand out in churches.

But several recent court decisions on gay-rights issues forced the House leadership's hand, some Republicans argued.

“Many of us in the House would prefer not to have this debate,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). “The question of the future of marriage in this country has been forced on us by activist judges, legislating from the bench.”

DeLay referred specifically to a 2003 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that legalized same-sex marriage in that state. As a result, the commonwealth became the first in the United States to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

DeLay and other opponents of same-sex marriage argued that federal lawsuits ultimately would lead to the invalidation of laws banning same-sex marriage in other states–meaning a federal constitutional amendment is the only way to prevent the legalization of gay marriage nationwide.

The amendment's opponents, however, cited the arguments of many legal scholars who said that, if enacted, the amendment could ban not only marriage, but civil unions and other marriage-like legal relationships designed to protect gay couples and their children.

The amendment, as proposed, reads: “Marriage in the United States shall consist solely of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.”

Gay-rights and civil-libertarian groups said the final vote vindicated their work against the amendment.

“President Bush and the Republican leadership looked down the barrel of the biggest defeat for anti-gay extremists ever,” said Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office. “They played fast and loose with the Constitution in a cheap election-year ploy, and they lost. Like the Senate did before, the House today said that discrimination has no place in the Constitution.”

But the proposal's supporters vowed to bring it up again in the next Congress. “This is only the beginning, I'm telling you, because this body will protect marriage,” DeLay said, to rare applause from the House visitors' gallery. “We will take it from here, and we will come back, and we will come back, and we will never give up.”