State Senate endorses amendment banning gay marriage

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri senators entered the national fray on gay marriage Tuesday, endorsing a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution defining marriage as "only between a man and a woman."

The state Senate's preliminary voice vote came on the same day that President Bush urged Congress to pass a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution and send it to the states.

If approved in a final Senate vote and by the House, the proposed amendment to the Missouri constitution would go on November's general election ballot.

Missouri law already declares it state policy "to recognize marriage only between a man and a woman" and specifically to not recognize same-sex marriages, even if performed in a state where they are legal.

But legislators in Missouri and other states with similar laws are considering enshrining the policies in their constitutions in response to a recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision declaring it unconstitutional there to prohibit gay marriages.

They also cite the actions of city officials in San Francisco who have issued thousands of gay marriage licenses despite a California law defining marriage as a heterosexual institution.

Placing a gay marriage ban in Missouri's constitution would ensure "activist judges" don't invalidate the will of the people and Legislature to limit marriage to one man and one woman, said Sen. Sarah Steelman, R-Rolla, who sponsoring the proposal.

Her legislation would add one sentence to the state constitution: "That to be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman."

Gay rights advocates criticized the proposal as unnecessarily punitive.

"They are proposing to amend the constitution -- for the first time in the state's history -- to say one group of people is not as good as another group of people. This is about discrimination," said Jeff Wunrow, executive director of the St. Louis-based gay rights group PROMO.

But some religious groups said the true precedent lay in efforts to grant marriage rights to gay couples.

"When you look at all of society, whether it's eastern or western civilization, you find thousands of years of rejections of same-sex marriages," said Kerry Messer, president of the Missouri Family Network and a lobbyist for the Missouri Baptist Convention. "You don't find any viable society that ever existed that has not based its social structure on one man, one woman."

Some supporters of the proposed amendment had hoped it would go further and also specifically prohibit same-sex civil unions.

But senators defeated 26-7 an amendment by Sen. Ken Jacob, D-Columbia, that would have added the phrase: "but this shall not justify civil unions as may be adopted by another state of the United States."

Jacob said the lack of such language could open the door for Missouri judges to legally recognize gay civil unions performed elsewhere, such as in Vermont.

"If you don't add this language to this bill, it is meaningless, absolutely meaningless," Jacob said.

But Steelman, and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, said the civil union language only would have complicated a simple proposal.

"We wanted to keep it a clean statement dealing with marriage only," said Kinder, who sponsored Missouri's original 1996 law against gay marriages. The courts struck down that law on a technicality that the legislation contained too many unrelated topics.

Legislators passed the current law in 200l, which was signed quietly by Democratic Gov. Bob Holden. This year's proposed constitutional amendment would go straight to the ballot without need of the governor's approval.

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Gay marriage amendment is SJR29

On the Net:

Missouri Legislature: http://www.moga.state.mo.us