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Gay marriage ban backers shift strategy
Unable to convince voters to ban anything that looks like gay marriage, proponents now are lowering their sights.
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A proposed constitutional amendment filed Monday by Senate President Tim Bee, R-Tucson, seeks to ask voters to spell out in the state constitution that "only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in this state."
Bee managed to get 15 of the 16 other Republican senators to sign on as sponsors.
An identical measure is being pushed in the House by Speaker Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, who got all but two of his Republican colleagues to be co-sponsors.
The move comes more than a year after voters rejected a more comprehensive constitutional amendment which would not only have banned same-sex marriage but also would have outlawed civil unions and barred state and local government from offering benefits to the domestic partners of their employees.
That measure picked up just 48.2 percent of the votes cast.
It also was the only gay marriage ballot measure in the country that failed.
Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which helped craft the 2006 measure, acknowledged the new version is far less sweeping than the initiative. But she said the decision was made to pursue what is politically possible.
"This is about where we agree, about bringing Arizonans together on an agreement on a definition of marriage," Herrod said.
A 1996 Arizona law already bars same-sex marriages. That statute was ruled constitutional in 2003 by the state Court of Appeals, a decision the Arizona Supreme Court left untouched.
But Ron Johnson, who lobbies on behalf of the Arizona Catholic Conference, said the initiative is necessary.
"At some point a court, the Legislature could overturn our statute," he said.
"So we want to let the people decide whether to put this in the constitution."
Narrowing the scope could defuse some of the opposition.
In a 2005 statewide survey, 54 percent of those asked said they would support a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to one man and one woman.
But when questioned about denying domestic partner benefits, support dropped to just 33 percent.
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