GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT NOT LIKELY TO PASS (3-2004)

Last week, President Bush did an about face when he came 
out in favor of a constitutional amendment that would ban 
same-sex marriages. Historically, he has favored leaving 
marriage laws up to individual states. 

But recent gay marriages in San Francisco, in defiance of 
state law, and a court decision in Massachusetts has made 
the issue a political hot potato, both nationwide and here 
in Indiana.

But what does it take to amend the Constitution of the 
United States?

It isn’t done very often. The Constitution has been amended 
only 27 times since it was ratified more than 200 years 
ago. And the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, were 
added by the First Congress as part of a deal that 
persuaded hold-out states to vote for ratification. 

So, for all practical purposes, the Constitution has been 
amended only 17 times. It is a long and difficult process 
to add an amendment. And that’s exactly what the Founding 
Fathers had in mind when they drafted it.

The drafters wanted to protect the rights of the minority. 
They wanted to make it difficult to amend the Constitution 
in order to protect society from the whims of a transient 
majority. So they required much more than a simple majority 
vote to add an amendment.

Although the Constitution does allow for a process by which 
the states can begin the amendment process, generally the 
first step is up to Congress. Both houses of Congress must 
pass the proposed amendment by a whopping two-thirds 
majority.

In the unlikely event that Congress does pass the proposed 
amendment with the required majority, it then goes to the 
legislatures of the states. In order to be added to the 
Constitution, the proposed amendment must be approved by 
three-fourths of the states. That would be 38 states today.

The last time the Constitution was amended was in 1992. The 
Twenty-Seventh Amendment makes it illegal for Congress to 
increase the salary of its members until a Congressional 
election has taken place. The odd thing about this 
amendment is that it was passed by Congress in 1789. But it 
was only ratified by six states out of the 13 needed at 
that time. It lay dormant for more nearly 200 years when a 
push to ratify it began in the 1980s. It was finally 
ratified, after 203 years, in 1992.

Although the Constitution does not put any time limits on 
ratification, Congress has placed a seven-year deadline on 
amendments proposed over the past few decades. 

And the proposed amendment number 28 also has a seven-year 
deadline for ratification once it has been passed by 
Congress. The amendment would define marriage as the legal 
union between one man and one woman. However, nothing in 
the amendment would prohibit so-called civil unions for 
homosexual couples.

Although polls show that 60 percent of Americans are 
against gay marriages, the proposed amendment has little 
chance of passing. Congress has passed seven proposed 
amendments that never made it through the state 
ratification process. The Equal Rights Amendment was the 
last attempt.

I am not in favor of permitting gay marriages, but I don’t 
think it warrants a Constitutional amendment. Most likely, 
the proposed gay marriage amendment is nothing but another 
election-year political ploy. But, then again, that’s how 
many amendments started out.