The U.S. Senate is set this week to begin consideration of S.J.Res. 1, the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It provides: "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." President Bush's Saturday Radio Address focused on his support for the Amendment. The Los Angeles Times says that no one expects the amendment to get the 67 votes it needs to pass the Senate.
For watchers of church-state issues, however, the mobilization of religious coalitions on both sides of the issue is interesting. The Chicago Tribune reports that the Religious Coalition for Marriage (Catholics, Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, and Orthodox Jews) favors the amendment while Clergy for Fairness (Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Reform Jews) is campaigning against it. This is not the only issue involving rights of gays and lesbians that has forced church groups to take competing political stands. In Washington state, the debate over forcing a referendum on the state's new civil rights act that protects gays and lesbians has also generated competing religious coalitions. (Tacoma News Tribune, June 4.)
In 1971 in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Chief Justice Burger wrote: "Ordinarily political debate and division, however vigorous or even partisan, are normal and healthy manifestations of our democratic system of government, but political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect." Does that mean that there is a special Establishment Clause problem with the current debates over gay rights?
