WASHINGTON (ABP) — 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.”
However, he noted that the framers “set a high bar for amending our Constitution — and history has shown us that it can take several tries before an amendment builds the two-thirds support it needs in both houses of Congress.”
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 (Maine), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and John Sununu (N.H.).
Independent Vermont Sen. James Jeffords joined 40 Democrats in blocking the bill. The only Democrats to vote in favor of ending debate were Sens. Robert Byrd (W.Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.).
Three senators did not vote — Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel, who was traveling with President Bush in Omaha; and Democrats Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
Democrats, gay-rights groups and religious progressives have said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) scheduled the vote as a way to shore up the Republican Party's conservative base in time for the midterm congressional elections in November.
In 2004, conservatives credited several state ballot issues on banning gay marriage with boosting Republican turnout in the presidential and congressional elections. Now, Bush's poll numbers are at near-historic lows, and Republicans run the risk of losing control of one or both chambers of Congress in November.
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.
Gay-rights leaders cried “foul” at that proposition.
“For the House to now take up a bill that's dead and twice failed would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt this is nothing more than election-year posturing,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a press release.
But supporters of the amendment noted that similar proposals on the state level continued to gain steam — with Alabama voters overwhelmingly approving a state constitutional ban on gay marriage, and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives overwhelmingly approving a similar measure, June 6. “There's good news for marriage across the U.S. today,” said a June 7 press release from the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based conservative Christian legal group.
The Senate bill was S.J.Res. 1. The House version, introduced in that chamber June 6, is H.J.Res. 88.
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