The Futile Effort To Ban Same-Sex Marriages With A Constitutional Amendment

Last week the Supreme Court delivered a serious blow to the opponents of legalizing same-sex marriage, when they struck down the portions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that prevented the federal government from granting the same rights and privileges to same-sex married couples as they grant to opposite-sex marriages. DOMA was the last line of defense the right-wing had to stop federal acceptance of same-sex marriage, and now the Supreme Court has declared it to be unconstitutional.

But that hasn't stopped those opposed to equal rights. They have been fighting a losing battle for a while now, and they have no intention of stopping that fight. At least 29 House Republicans, led by Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp (pictured at left), have introduced a constitutional amendment in the House of Representatives -- an amendment called the "Marriage Protection Amendment", which would ban same-sex marriages anywhere in the United States. The amendment reads as follows:

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.

Of course, a snowball has a better chance of surviving the summer in the Mojave Desert than this amendment does of passing enough hurdles to actually become a part of our Constitution. The bill would need to be approved by a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then it would have to be approved by three-fourths of the 50 states -- and it doesn't stand a chance of meeting any of those requirements.

The right-wing fundamentalists have already lost this war to deny equal rights to all Americans, whether they want to admit it or not. This is nothing more than a dying whimper.