Cambridge Journals Online

The Federal Marriage Amendment and the Strange Evolution of the Conservative Case against Gay Marriage

The idea for a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) did not suddenly dawn upon Senate Republicans in the summer of 2004, when debate on the amendment began in earnest on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Despite the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, conservatives have long worried about what they believe are the threats to traditional heterosexual marriage posed by the courts. Their fears peaked in 2003, when the courts struck twice: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that state homosexual sodomy laws are unconstitutional, while the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health ordered state officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.