For the second time in as many election years, the Senate has killed a proposal to amend the Constitution to deny marriage to same-sex couples.
That won't stop the House from taking up the same proposal, though, and opponents of gay rights noted that the measure picked up one Senate vote from the last time.
Senators effectively killed the bill for the rest of the year on a 49-48 procedural vote June 7. The vote was not on the amendment itself, but on a measure to cut off debate and proceed to a vote on the substantive matter of the proposed amendment. Although the margin constituted a majority of the senators present, it was well short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to cut off debate as well as the 67 votes needed to approve the amendment.
President Bush, who had made two speeches endorsing the amendment in the days prior to the vote, said he was “disappointed the Senate did not achieve the necessary number of votes to move the amendment process forward.”
While supporters of the ban gained one vote over their 2004 total, they also lost two Republicans who voted in favor of closing debate on the bill then—Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Several new Republicans replaced Democratic senators in the 2004 elections.
Specter and Gregg were joined by five other Republicans in opposing a final vote on the measure—Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Susan Collins (Me.), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and John Sununu (N.H.).
In the wake of the Senate vote, House Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to bring the bill before Congress' lower chamber as early as July.