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While federal lawmakers could not agree on a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, state legislators are plowing ahead.

And that's just the way it should be, according to a panel Thursday at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Salt Lake City.

"We ought to have respect for the system our founding fathers put in place," said Bob Barr, a former Georgia congressman and now a CNN commentator. "These are issues that have been left - as they ought to be - with the states."

Ten state legislatures - including Utah and Georgia - have approved proposed amendment language. And a citizen ballot initiative has placed a marriage amendment on the ballot in Arkansas.

Gallup polls for Newsweek magazine every two years show support for gay marriage has hovered around 30 percent for the past decade. Passage of Barr's federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 didn't shift opinion; neither did the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision to allow gay marriages in that state.

But state lawmakers reacted to both. Thirty-nine states adopted DOMA. And after the Massachusetts decision, legislators in 24 states introduced bills to define marriage 58 times.

Barr said he believes Georgia's amendment is unnecessary.

"Georgia law is very, very clear already," he said. "It's not good public policy to amend the Constitution to show we really, really, really mean it. Constitutions should be held more sacred than that."

Human Rights Campaign National Field Director Seth Kilbourn agrees. He told lawmakers majority opinion is no reason to change state constitutions. Marriage amendments are unnecessary, discriminatory and run counter to constitutional principles of equality, Kilbourn said.

"The Constitution was designed to prevent this tyranny of the majority," Kilbourn said. "If we start amending the Constitution in reaction to court decisions we don't like, we start down a very divisive and un-American road. Throughout history, the Constitution was used to expand rights. To cement the views of the current majority in our constitutions is discrimination."

Only Vincent McCarthy, an attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice, argued for a federal marriage amendment, citing 140 studies that blame the decline of society on deterioration of traditional marriage - first established in 1780, he said - into "motherless" and "fatherless" families.

"Children are deeply disadvantaged by the devaluation and disintegration of marriage," McCarthy said. "As go the marriages of Massachusetts, so go the states and the nation."

McCarthy's comments riled many in the crowd, who questioned his studies and his glowing references to historical definitions of marriage.

Draper Rep. LaVar Christensen, sponsor of Utah's amendment during the 2004 Legislature, added his own question to the muddle, referring to the language of the Declaration of Independence. "Does America still believe in the 'Laws of Nature' and 'Nature's God'? he asked.

"We don't base laws on one interpretation of the Bible," Kilbourn responded.