WASHINGTON (ABP) — Senate supporters of a constitutional ban on gay marriage failed to muster a simple majority in support of the amendment July 14 — meaning the proposal is likely dead in the Senate until next year.
A motion to cut off debate and proceed to a substantive vote on the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment failed on a 48-50 vote. Such a motion for “cloture” requires 60 votes to succeed in the Senate. If senators had voted on the amendment itself, it would have required a two-thirds majority — or 67, assuming all 100 senators cast a vote.
The Senate's Republican leadership had hoped to bring the bill before the chamber for a regular up-or-down vote July 14. However, a dispute over possible substitutes that might have more appeal to moderates in both parties caused Democrats to balk.
Gay-rights supporters said the vote was a resounding victory for their cause. “Today's vote is a very powerful repudiation of bigotry in America,” Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told reporters at a press conference following the vote.
Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said the vote was an example of “an attempt to divide Americans that backfired and divided Republicans.”
Six Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against further consideration of the constitutional amendment. They were Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.), Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Susan Collins (Maine), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and John Sununu (N.H.).
Of the Senate's 49 Democrats, all but five voted against proceeding with the amendment. Sens. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Zell Miller (Ga.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) departed from their colleagues on the vote.
Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina — the expected Democratic nominees for president and vice president — did not return to Washington from the campaign trail to vote on the procedural matter. However, they earlier had stated their opposition to the amendment and said they would come back to Capitol Hill to vote against the amendment itself if it had come to an up-or-down ballot.
Both Kerry and Edwards oppose same-sex marriage but say amending the Constitution to ban it is too drastic a step.
Proponents, meanwhile, touted the amendment as an urgent response to “attacks” on traditional marriage, some contending the survival of America depends on stopping the gay-marriage movement. A constitutional amendment is necessary, they said, because “activist judges” are interpreting the Constitution to advance the gay agenda.
Amendment supporters added they will not abandon their cause despite the Senate defeat.
“The battle has just begun,” said Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), the bill's chief Senate sponsor. “I think this is a very strong first vote.”
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), another strong proponent of the measure, likened the vote to similar gay-marriage bans that failed to pass state legislatures on their first votes but succeeded in subsequent tries. He noted that almost all Senate Democrats who spoke in opposition to the amendment also said they oppose same-sex marriage.
“We won on substance but lost on procedure,” Brownback told reporters after the vote. “This is a central issue. It will continue to be engaged.”
However, Allard admitted that the proposal and similar ones would likely not come up again this year in the Senate.
In the days leading up to the vote, the amendment had been the subject of an intense lobbying campaign from its proponents — chief among them President Bush. The Senate's Republican leadership bypassed committees and the normal legislative process to force quick action by the full chamber on the amendment, despite objections from some within the GOP itself.
Democrats charged Republicans with bringing up the bill — despite knowing it would fail — to boost turnout among religious conservative voters in this fall's presidential and congressional elections.
Giving credence to that charge, Religious Right activist Gary Bauer said the Senate vote will become a factor in the elections. “I think that Senator Kerry has a tremendous problem here,” Bauer told reporters in a hallway outside the Senate chamber.
In the post-vote press conference, Brownback said voters will pay attention to their senators' action on the amendment. “I think it will be a significant issue in the fall elections.”
And a group that has been outspoken in favor of the bill — the Family Research Council — issued a press release predicting doom for anti-amendment candidates. “[W]e now know which senators are for traditional marriage and which ones are not, and by November so will voters in every state,” said FRC president Tony Perkins in the statement. “[E]very time this issue is forced into the public square, the opposition to same-sex 'marriage' among the American public grows.”
The issue of gay marriage came to the forefront last year when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage in that state.
Supporters of the constitutional amendment defend their election-year push by arguing that, in the absence of a constitutional ban on gay marriage, it will likely be imposed on the entire country by future court decisions.
“This wasn't driven by politics; this was driven by activist courts,” Allard said.
However, legal scholars are divided on whether the federal Supreme Court is anywhere near accepting a case regarding same-sex marriage, much less rendering a decision that would impose same-sex marriage on the entire country.
The proposed amendment reads: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only 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.”
The proposed amendment is Senate Joint Resolution 40. Leaders in the House of Representatives have announced their intent to bring a similar version of the amendment to that chamber's floor by November.
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