March 4, 2004-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist yesterday vowed to move quickly to amend the US Constitution to block gay marriages, predicting same-sex unions would spread like "wildfire" across all 50 states if Massachusetts starts issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples on May 17.

"It's not a fight that we asked for or that we relish, but it is a fight that we will undertake," said Frist, a Tennessee Republican. "We will simply not let activist judges redefine -- I would say radically redefine -- what marriage is, and that is the union of a man and a woman."

Frist spoke as hundreds of spectators lined up to attend the Senate's first hearing into the national implications of the Massachusetts court decision approving gay marriage. Members of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution heard varying opinions from pastors and experts on the law, civil rights, and marriage, but the real tension was between the senators themselves, with Democrats accusing the Republican majority of playing politics with the Constitution.

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and the committee chairman, said he supported a federal constitutional ban as "the only way to ensure survival of traditional marriage in America." His aim, he said, is to rein in "renegade judges" like the majority on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that ruled in November that gays have the right to marry.

"Apologists for the Massachusetts court lamely contend that democracy and marriage can be restored in that state," Cornyn said, referring to the battle resuming next week on Beacon Hill to amend the state constitution. "But not until 2006 -- and only through a process citizens shouldn't have to endure just to preserve current law.

"In the meantime," Cornyn said, "the horse is already out of the barn."

Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who cochairs the Constitution subcommittee, argued bitterly against Congress launching a "preemptive strike" on the Constitution while legislatures and courts resolve the gay marriage issue in their states. "This is a divisive, political exercise in an election year, plain and simple," Feingold said, asserting that amendment supporters were misleading the public to believe the nation is in crisis over gay marriage.

Frist made his pledge to put the federal marriage amendment on a fast track at a press conference with black, Latino, and Asian members of the Alliance for Marriage, a group that is promoting the amendment.

"I know the lawyers who have been fighting to abolish traditional marriage laws in Massachusetts," said the Rev. Richard Richardson of St. Paul AME Church in Boston, a member of the Alliance who testified at the hearing. "They are tenacious, they are aggressive, and they will stop at nothing until every marriage law in this nation is struck down."

At the same time, a coalition of civil-rights and gay advocacy groups warned that an amendment would discriminate against gay Americans. The NAACP yesterday anounced its opposition to the proposed amendment.

Both Frist and Cornyn pointed to public officials in San Francisco and New York State permitting gay couples to obtain marriage licenses as evidence that the SJC ruling is reverberating beyond Massachusetts' borders. Yesterday, county officials began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in Portland, Ore., while New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer issued an opinion that New York Domestic Relations law, which refers to a "bride and groom" and "husband and wife," does not authorize same-sex marriages.

"The issues underlying this opinion represent matters on which people of good faith have strongly held and widely divergent views," Spitzer said. "Ultimately, these issues will be resolved in the courts."

Frist said "the wildfire will begin" when same-sex couples who wed in Massachusetts after May 17 move to other states and file lawsuits to have their marriages recognized. "In many ways, it has already begun, and same-sex marriage is likely to spread to all 50 states in coming years," Frist said. "So regardless of what Massachusetts does on March 11," when the state constitutional convention resumes, "it is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must act."

R. Lea Brilmayer, a professor at Yale Law School, testified that the "full faith and credit" clause of the US Constitution has never forced one state to recognize marriage licences issued in another. She added that it would be unprecedented for a federal constitutional amendment to overturn the action of one state.

Attorney General Jon Bruning of Nebraska disagreed and predicted courts will overturn state and federal Defense of Marriage laws. "I am here because of the reality that four judges in Massachusetts could eventually invalidate Nebraska's ban on same-sex marriage," Bruning said.

"This is politics at its nastiest," said Cheryl Jacques, the former Massachusetts legislator who now heads the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group. "It's a shame the White House is orchestrating a hearing to discuss whether gay families should have basic human rights protections."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/04/senate_leader_vows_fast_action_to_ban_same_sex_marriages/