WASHINGTON (ABP) — Procedural disputes in the Senate will likely prevent an up-or-down vote on a federal same-sex marriage ban that was expected to take place July 14.
Disagreements between Republicans and Democrats and within the GOP itself appeared June 13 to have killed an earlier agreement to bring the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment up for a vote on the Senate floor.
The amendment, scheduled for a vote on the morning of July 14, has been the subject of an intense lobbying campaign from its proponents — chief among them President Bush.
The Senate's Republican leadership went around the normal legislative process to force action by the full Senate on the amendment, over the objections of some within their own party.
The Senate's Democratic leadership, who oppose the amendment, had agreed to allow an up-or-down vote on the amendment itself on the Senate floor. However, they threatened June 12 to block an up-or-down vote on the amendment because Republicans raised the possibility of introducing an alternative version of the proposal at the last minute in a bid to get something passed.
The Federal Marriage Amendment, sponsored by Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), currently 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.”
Many Democrats and moderate Republicans have objected to the second sentence, saying its language is vague enough to ban far more legal arrangements than full marriage for same-sex couples, such as civil unions.
An alternative proposed July 12 would have deleted the second sentence of the amendment, making it more palatable to moderates in both parties.
But Democrats said suddenly opening up the debate to alternative amendments would set a dangerous precedent, inviting other constitutional proposals for sudden consideration on the Senate floor.
“That is the problem we have when we report legislation directly to the floor without the necessary [committee] hearings,” Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said during debate on the bill July 12. “The Senate chamber is not the place to do what committees are there to do.”
Reid added that, if the Senate proceeded as the Republicans desired, “this amendment would be bogged down with Christmas-tree-like ornaments called amendments.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) moved late on July 12 to cut off debate on the proposal and force a final vote. However, the Senate requires a supermajority of 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote. Senior legislative aides in both parties have said that the marriage amendment, as currently written, would likely get around 50 votes. As a constitutional amendment, it would need a two-thirds majority of 67 votes to pass.
If the amendment's supporters get less than 60 votes in the July 14 closure vote, then the amendment is effectively dead for the near future.
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), one of the amendment's chief proponents, seemed resigned to that fate July 13. When asked by an Associated Baptist Press reporter if his side could muster even the 60 votes to cut off debate, he said, “I don't know, but stranger things have happened.”
Reid, a Democrat, speculated that Republicans could be forcing the procedural vote to protect their own members. “Maybe there are those on the other side who would rather not vote on the amendment itself,” Reid said. “I think if we had a good, straight, up-or-down vote on the resolution, I would be surprised if we did not get eight to 12 Republican senators voting against the resolution now before this body.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), one of the amendment's chief opponents, echoed complaints by many on her side of the aisle that Republicans were staging the vote as an election-year political move — particularly aimed at hurting Democrats running for re-election in socially conservative states.
“Why are we doing this when we have only passed one appropriations bill?” she asked July 12. “The only answer I can come up with is because this is political. It is to drive a division into the voters of America, into the people of America — one more wedge issue at a very difficult time, to be used politically in elections.”
But the bill's supporters said the issue was being forced not by Republicans, but by judicial actions — such as last fall's decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalizing gay marriage in that state.
“The courts took this right away from the people and their elected representatives,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), said July 12 on the Senate floor. “The judiciary's cultural bulldozer is on the move and has already done too much damage.”
President Bush has mentioned his support for the bill repeatedly in the last several days. “When judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution — the only law a court cannot overturn,” Bush said in his weekly radio address July 10. “A constitutional amendment should never be undertaken lightly — yet to defend marriage, our nation has no other choice.”
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