The Senate dealt an election-year defeat Wednesday to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, rejecting pleas from President Bush and fellow conservatives that the measure was needed to safeguard an institution that has flourished for thousands of years. The vote was 48-50, 12 short of the 60 needed to keep the measure alive. Six Republicans joined dozens of Democrats in sealing the amendment's fate. [...] In all, 45 Republicans and three Democrats voted to keep the measure alive. Six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in opposition.
The odds have never favored passage in the current Congress, in part because many Democrats oppose it, but also because numerous conservatives are hesitant to overrule state prerogatives on the issue.
Of course, the House is going to try to bring this back up in September. If both parties keep better control of their members than the Senate did (a somewhat big "if"), the amendment will still fail, but it will fail by having an insufficient majority -- that is, if it were a simple law as opposed to a constutional amendment, it would have the numbers to pass -- as opposed to failing to achieve cloture.
Purely a side note: you do have to love that essentially what happened to the amendment was that the Republicans filibustered themselves -- although, that said, even if every single one of the Republicans who voted against cloture had instead voted the other way, there wouldn't have been enough votes for cloture. However, a 54-44 vote for cloture would have been a somewhat different campaign issue than a 48-50 vote against. At 54-44, the GOP could have blamed them dirty dog Democrats for blocking a vote on an issue that's "...the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage" as Senator Rick Santorum put it. (One must be impressed at the truly remarkable breadth and depth of Santorum's assholery.) It's much harder to make that argument when it's the members of your own party keeping you from achieving even a simple majority.
Posted by iain at July 14, 2004 01:18 PM
