eva young
Eva Young is President of Log Cabin Republicans of Minnesota and lives in Minneapolis with her cat, Kiddleleewink. You can also read her other blog here.
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November 07, 2004

The FMA as introduced says this:

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, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

The Alliance for Marriage claims this amendment will not bar state legislators passing laws that allow for civil unions or domestic partner benefits.

Robert George from Princeton University, one of the drafters of the amendment disputes this in an email to Larry Frost, who chaired the 3rd congressional district Bush campaign in Minnesota.

The FMA does not bar legislatures from granting the incidents of marriage to anyone they choose. (It does bar courts from doing so.)

However as he continues, it is clear that the amendment would overturn Vermont and California laws that allow for civil unions - which were passed in the legislature. If Massachusetts voters vote down a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, this amendment will overturn the will of the Massachusetts people in Massachusetts.

It was not my intention, or the intention of others involved in the drafting, to bar legislatures from granting the incidents of marriage to anyone they choose. I have never said anything, publicly or privately, that remotely suggests that this was my intention.

With respect to "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships," a state legislature may, consistently with the FMA, establish such things, subject only to the requirement (following, I believe, from the logic of the first sentence of the FMA) that benefits, privileges, rights, and immunities may not be predicated on the existence or assumption of nonmarital sexual conduct and relationships. So people who are not prepared to attest that they are having sex with each other or intend to do so (including people who may not lawfully have sex with each other) cannot be excluded from eligibility on that basis. This requirement in no way restricts eligibility (since the FMA would not preclude persons in a nonmarital sexual relationship from eligibility to register as, say, domestic partners in a state that chooses to have domestic partnerships); rather it expands eligibility (by ensuring that persons who are not in a nonmarital sexual relationship are not excluded from eligibility for that reason).

Best wishes,
Robert George

More analysis here.