c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The House of Representatives rejected Tuesday (July 18) an attempt to amend the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage, falling short of the required two-thirds majority.

While 236 House members supported the amendment, 187 voted against it. Still the amendment gained votes from 2004, when 227 representatives voted for a similar amendment.

The two hours of debate leading to the vote were fiery. Lawmakers on one side said the amendment intruded on church activities and civil rights, while others asserted that a majority of the American people believe marriage should be kept as the traditionally defined union of a man and woman.

The Federal Marriage Amendment, which the Senate rejected June 7, would have added a definition of marriage as a heterosexual union to the Constitution. Even if the House had passed the amendment, it would not have gone on to the states for ratification, since the Senate rejected it.

“This legislation should have never reached the floor of the House, yet once again politics goes against common sense,” Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said.

Republicans on Capital Hill have made the marriage amendment part of their “American Values Agenda,” designed to galvanize the party’s base ahead of November elections.

But Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., denied that the issue was brought to the floor for political reasons. The fact that the Senate defeated the amendment is all the more justification for the House to “stand up and send a positive message to the American people about what is the best environment for a family,” Graves said.

Religious groups have continued to stake out positions on both sides of the issue, sending out a barrage of statements in recent days as courts upheld a state marriage law in Nebraska and kept a similar referendum alive in Tennessee. Both measures would limit marriage to the union of one man and one woman. Forty-six states have laws or constitutional amendments that define marriage as a heterosexual union.

“The constituents deserve to know where their representative in Congress stands on the issue,” said Amanda Banks, a federal policy analyst for the conservative Focus on the Family. “(The amendment) will not go anywhere unless members are required to vote on it.”

Though the amendment had little chance of moving on, groups like the Unitarian Universalist Association, which have long opposed it, continued to express concern.

“When it deals with real people and real lives and important issues like this, it is important,” said Rob Keithan, the director of the UUA’s Washington office.

A co-sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., called for expansion of the amendment to “go after the other major threats to the institution” by blocking people who divorce, commit adultery or are convicted of child abuse from running for public office. But Davis’ spokesman, Tom Hayden, said the remark was “more tongue-in-cheek than anything else.”

The Traditional Values Coalition, which opposes homosexual marriage, nevertheless also opposed Tuesday’s amendment, arguing it didn’t do enough to protect “traditional” marriages.

“This amendment has been promoted as stopping homosexual marriage and `fixing the problem,’ and that is not true,” said Andrea Lafferty, the coalition’s executive director. “The amendment will enshrine in the U.S. Constitution the right for states to have civil unions.”

Supporters of gay marriage rights argue that this debate belongs at the state level, where legislatures have confronted the issue numerous times in recent years.

“I think that we’re reconciling this issue the way we need to right now,” the UUA’s Keithan said. “In different communities and different states across the nation … people are having conversations about this.”

DSB/RB END RNS