This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
On its face, Scott McCoy's task seems hopeless.
But maybe not. Utah lawmakers hoped to galvanize conservative voters by putting the amendment on the ballot. Instead, they might have helped organize the opposition.
A new Salt Lake Tribune poll shows public support for the draft amendment is not monolithic. Of 400 registered voters polled last week, 41 percent believe a constitutional amendment is unnecessary, 54 percent say Utah's Constitution should be amended and 5 percent were undecided.
A previous Tribune poll in January found that nearly 80 percent of Utahns favored defining marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. The more recent survey shows that Utahns' apparent support for "traditional" marriage does not necessarily extend to amending the state's Constitution.
The proposed amendment is written in two parts. The first states, "Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman." The second clause prohibits recognition of common law marriages and civil unions: "No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent effect."
WordPerfect founder Bruce Bastian has donated $250,000 to the as-yet unformed political interest committee and another $1.3 million to the national Human Rights Campaign. He says Utah's amendment goes beyond the proposed federal amendment, which only defines marriage. The word "marriage" appears more than 1,000 times in federal statutes governing inheritance rights, Social Security benefits, hospital visitation and tax law.
"This is not about religion. This is about discrimination," Bastian said. "This means if you go to Las Vegas and get married by Elvis, you automatically have certain rights and protections that gay couples do not have."
McCoy is trying to tailor a message to appeal to conservative Utahns' sense of fairness. He says the first statement of the amendment is redundant. In 1995, Utah lawmakers refused to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. This year, they added another law defining marriage as the legal union between a man and a woman.
But the rest of the amendment, McCoy says, poses far-reaching, unintended consequences. If Utah voters approve the amendment, it could throw into question civil unions, domestic partnerships and even heterosexual common-law marriages and the resulting legal rights and contracts. McCoy wonders about the amendment's impact on Utah employers -- such as American Express -- that provide health benefits to domestic partners.
"We're not asking Utahns to come out in favor of gay marriage. We're asking them to think about the document they're being asked to revise," McCoy said. "The Constitution is not something that you tinker with in a trivial manner."
Utah lawmakers insist this isn't trivial. The sponsors of the amendment, Draper Republican Rep. LaVar Christensen and West Jordan Sen. Chris Buttars, argued during the 2004 Legislature that they are defending the very basic foundation of a moral society -- the marriage of a man and a woman -- from activist judges.
State laws are not enough, Buttars said. "If you put this in the Constitution, its permanency is much greater."
But Salt Lake City Democratic Rep. Scott Daniels, a member of the Utah Constitutional Revision Commission, says the amendment is more about election-year grandstanding than defending morality. When reviewing proposed amendments during the legislative session, commission members never reviewed the amendment, skipping over the language when Christensen missed the meeting.
"This is an election-year tactic," Daniels said. "The chances that Utah's Supreme Court would ever rule in the way that the Massachusetts court did" are slim.
The LDS Church is staying out of the fray -- for now. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged its members to vote for similar constitutional amendments in California and Hawaii.
But church spokesman Dale Bills said Wednesday, "The church has taken no position regarding the proposed state gay marriage amendment."
At the State Republican Party Convention last weekend, Christensen and Buttars, along with Eagle Forum director Gayle Ruzicka, attempted to persuade delegates to adopt a resolution in support of the amendment. But most of the 3,500 delegates had already left, bringing business to a close.
"It wasn't deliberate," says GOP Chairman Joe Cannon. "I actually wanted to get to it. This resolution would have passed nearly unanimously."