Hardly anybody supposes that the Senate will pass a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage when it takes up the question early next month. But the exercise is crucially important just the same, in more ways than one. In particular, a Senate vote on an issue many senators would prefer to avoid — along with House action expected in late July — will tell voters where their elected representatives stand just five months before the November elections.
Then it's about politics, you say? Certainly it's about politics. The entire struggle for and against same-sex marriage is an intensely political affair, and the constitutional amendment is an important part of it.
The best guess is that the Protection of Marriage Amendment will pick up four more Senate votes this time than it did in 2004, when 48 senators supported ending a filibuster and 50 voted against. (John Kerry and John Edwards were out campaigning at the time, but they would have backed the filibuster if they had voted.) If the constitutional amendment really does get 52 votes this year, that will allow supporters — who include President Bush, the Catholic bishops, and many religious and pro-family groups — to claim progress.
But it also will leave a very long way to go. Two-thirds of the votes in both the Senate and the House plus ratification by three-fourths of the states are required to add an amendment to the Constitution.
The key sentence in the marriage amendment is simplicity itself: “Marriage in the United States shall consist solely of the union of a man and a woman.” It is a measure of the boldness of gay activist groups — as well as the intellectual confusion of entirely too many judges and lawmakers — that we should have to argue about that.
For certain members of the Senate the amendment represents a special test. That group notably includes Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain, eager to position himself for a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, has been mending fences with conservatives of late. But up to now he's opposed the federal marriage amendment while supporting a similar addition to the Arizona constitution.
McCain argues that defining marriage is up to each state. But the states' rights approach fails to give appropriate weight to the fact that states may need protecting from having same-sex marriage forced on them by courts, including the US Supreme Court, and amending the federal Constitution is the way to do that.
Meanwhile same-sex marriage proponents are pressing cases in at least seven states. One of these — a case in California appears the best bet — could reach the Supreme Court in two years. Opponents of same-sex marriage hope another Bush nominee on the model of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will have joined the Supreme Court by then.
That underscores a further element of political relevance in next month's events — the impact they may have on several contested Senate races, such as the touch-and-go re-election campaign of conservative stalwart Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA).
If President Bush gets another shot at the Supreme Court in the next two years and sends up the name of a solid conservative like Roberts and Alito, Senate Democrats prodded by pro-choice and gay activist groups will do everything they can to keep that nominee off the court. In that case, every vote is likely to count in the showdown. Next month's Senate debate on the marriage amendment could in part be setting the stage for a Supreme Court nomination fight to end all nomination fights.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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