Lawmakers voice concern for states' rights
WASHINGTON -- Spurred by a flurry of gay marriages and a public nudging from President Bush, the Senate next week will begin holding hearings on whether to amend the US Constitution to preclude marriages between people of the same sex. But whether Congress will pass such an amendment is unclear, with even lawmakers opposed to gay marriage expressing reluctance yesterday to take such a dramatic step.
Many senators and House members said they are distressed about the domino effect of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision requiring the state to sanction same-sex marriages, and worried aloud that "activist judges" would demand that all states recognize gay unions made in Massachusetts beginning in May and others licensed recently in San Francisco and Bernalillo, N.M., contrary to state laws.
But those same lawmakers said they were not sure they were prepared to endure the legislative trauma of negotiating acceptable language and winning two-thirds' majorities in both chambers of Congress to submit a proposed amendment to the states for ratification -- especially in an election year, when legislative schedules are truncated and lawmakers are distracted by their campaigns.
"It's a very troubling matter to me. I don't believe in discrimination in any form, and I certainly don't believe in discrimination against gays," said Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Utah Republican said he would prefer to leave the issue to the states -- even if that meant leaving states the option of allowing gay marriages -- as long as opposing states were not required to acknowledge those unions. But Hatch said he was not certain that idea would pass constitutional muster.
Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, said the concept of marriage being a union between one man and one woman is "if not biblical, then certainly historical, and I think it is both." But he added that "the Congress takes the consideration of a constitutional amendment very seriously. We're very cautious."
The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, and one of his chamber's leading cultural conservatives, said the House would do "whatever it takes to protect marriage." But he offered no schedule for hearings on a proposed constitutional amendment in the House and said he needed to canvass his colleagues before coming up with a plan. "This is so important we are not going to take a knee-jerk reaction to this," DeLay said yesterday.
Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania and a leading supporter of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, said he hoped to get a bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by spring. But Senate leaders said they did not know whether a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would win the required supermajority in the Senate.
The pending amendment, sponsored by Senator Wayne Allard and Representative Marilyn N. Musgrave, both Colorado Republicans, would leave to the states the option of giving gay and lesbian couples some kind of recognition as partners, without allowing them to marry, Allard said.
The Allard-Musgrave amendment, the only one filed so far in Congress, reads: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
On the House side, the issue is "on the radar screen, but it's not on the fast track," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois. "We want to make sure we have all our ducks in order."
The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said she would fight to defeat a proposed amendment. "This is a classic case of the president trying to distract from his failures," she said.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and a constitutional lawyer, said the amendment would represent the only time since Prohibition that the Constitution was altered to limit rights, instead of expand them.
