Tennessee Same-Sex Marriage Ban, Amendment 1 (2006)

Voting on Marriage and Family
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Tennessee Amendment 2, also known as the Same-Sex Marriage Ban, was on the November 7, 2006 ballot in the state of Tennessee as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment, where it was approved. a

Its successful passage meant that the Tennessee Constitution was altered so as to define marriage as a contract between one man and one woman. The ballot measure was legislatively referred to the ballot by the Tennessee State Legislature. The successful ballot proposition added a new Section 18 to Article XI of the Tennessee Constitution which says, "The historical institution and legal contract solemnizing the relationship of one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be the only legally recognized marital contract in this state. Any policy or law or judicial interpretation, purporting to define marriage as anything other than the historical institution and legal contract between one (1) man and one (1) woman, is contrary to the public policy of this state and shall be void and unenforceable in Tennessee. If another state or foreign jurisdiction issues a license for persons to marry and if such marriage is prohibited in this state by the provisions of this section, then the marriage shall be void and unenforceable in this state."

Aftermath

U.S. Supreme Court

See also: Obergefell v. Hodges

On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution in the case Obergefell v. Hodges. This ruling overturned all voter-approved constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.

Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the opinion and Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each authored a dissent.

The concluding paragraph of the court's majority opinion read:

“	No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.	”
—Opinion of the Court in Obergefell v. Hodges

Election results

Tennessee Amendment 1 (2006)
Result		Votes	Percentage
a Yes		1,419,434	81.3%
No		327,536	18.7%

Text of measure

The language that appeared on the ballot:

Constitution Amendment #1

Shall Article XI of the Constitution of the State of Tennessee be amended by adding the following language as a new, appropriately designated section:

SECTION___. The historical institution and legal contract solemnizing the relationship of one man and one woman shall be the only legally recognized marital contract in this state. Any policy or law or judicial interpretation, purporting to define marriage as anything other than the historical institution and legal contract between one man and one woman, is contrary to the public policy of this state and shall be void and unenforceable in Tennessee. If another state or foreign jurisdiction issues a license for persons to marry and if such marriage is prohibited in this state by the provisions of this section, then the marriage shall be void and unenforceable in this state.

Constitutional changes

Amendment 1 added a section to Article XI of the Tennessee Constitution.

Introduction and approval

In order for an amendment to the Tennessee State Constitution to be fully ratified, it must be approved by both houses of the Tennessee General Assembly for two successive legislative sessions. It is then put on the ballot as a referendum in the next gubernatorial election, where it must be approved by an absolute majority of those voting in the election.

The amendment was first proposed in the Tennessee House of Representatives on March 17, 2004, as House Joint Resolution 990 (HJR 990). The House of Representatives approved HJR 990 on May 6, 2004, by a vote of eighty-five to five. The measure received Senate approval on May 19, 2004, by a vote of twenty-eight to one. After the 2004 election, the amendment was introduced in the Tennessee State Senate as Senate Joint Resolution 31 (SJR 31). The Senate approved the measure on February 28, 2005, by a vote of twenty-nine to two, and the House of Representatives approved the measure on March 17, 2005, by a vote of eighty-eight to seven. The amendment was then slated to be submitted to voters as a referendum during the 2006 gubernatorial election.

On April 21, 2005, a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the Tennessee Equality Project, and other plaintiffs, claiming that the amendment had not been published in a timely manner between legislative sessions as the state constitution required; specifically, that its newspaper publication had occurred only four months prior to the legislative election in November 2004 rather than the required six. This suit was dismissed at the appellate court level in March 2006 on the grounds that the legislature's intent to put the amendment before voters in November 2006 was widely reported in the media, meeting this requirement in spirit if not in letter. This decision was in turn appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the ACLU's case in July 2006, stating that the plaintiffs did not show adequate standing to bring the lawsuit, thereby clearing the way for the amendment to appear on the November ballot.

Polls conducted prior to the election showed widespread support for the amendment. According to a Mason-Dixon poll released one month before the election, seventy-three percent of registered Tennessee voters supported the amendment, twenty percent opposed it, and seven percent were undecided. As expected, the amendment passed by a large margin. Eighty-one percent of voters approved the amendment and nineteen percent opposed it. As of November 2006, twenty-six other U.S. states have also passed defense of marriage amendments.

Related measures

Voters approved ballot measures to define marriage as between one male and one female in the following 30 states. The first such measure was in 1998, and the latest one occurred in May 2012. Bans on same-sex marriage were invalidated in the 2015 United States Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges.

• 1998: Alaska
• 2000: Nebraska
• 2002: Nevada
• 2004: Arkansas
• 2004: Georgia
• 2004: Kentucky
• 2004: Louisiana
• 2004: Michigan
• 2004: Mississippi
• 2004: Missouri
• 2004: Montana
• 2004: North Dakota
• 2004: Ohio
• 2004: Oklahoma
• 2004: Oregon
• 2004: Utah
• 2005: Kansas
• 2005: Texas
• 2006: Alabama
• 2006: Colorado
• 2006: Idaho
• 2006: South Carolina
• 2006: South Dakota
• 2006: Tennessee
• 2006: Virginia
• 2006: Wisconsin
• 2008: Arizona
• 2008: California
• 2008: Florida
• 2012: North Carolina

See also

Suggest a link

• Tennessee 2006 ballot measures
• 2006 ballot measures
• List of Tennessee ballot measures

External links

• Vote No on 1 - Tennessee Equality Project's official site opposing the amendment
• RealMarriage.org - Website supporting the amendment
• TNMarriage.org - Tennessee Baptist Convention web pages supporting the amendment
• The Money Behind the 2006 Marriage Amendments -- National Institute on Money in State Politics
• Election Results by County, Constitutional Amendments