Federal Marriage Amendment Dies its First Death

A vote for cloture failed on the Senate floor, meaning that the proposed amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage is effectively filibustered.

Here is the information about this bill from the Senate's website. There were 19 co-sponsors including some famous names, like: Elizabeth Dole, Bill Frist, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Trent Lott, Zell Miller, Rick Santorum, and Jeff Sessions. The text of the now dead amendment (for this year) read:

`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.'

These co-sponsors, and their attempt here, will be remembered for at least a generation, as attempting to write their prejudices into the Constitution. It is as embarrassing to the country as Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat racism.