Voters support marriage measure

Utah voters showed support Tuesday for the Amendment 3 measure to ban same-sex marriage, which was headed to a solid victory at press time.

The well-funded Don't Amend Alliance had argued that Amendment 3 would likely have punitive impacts on all unmarried couples by threatening existing legal benefits such as wills, powers of attorney or hospital visitation.

Tuesday's results, however, indicated voters agree with amendment supporters who have said the amendment is needed to protect traditional marriage from court challenges, such as in Massachusetts where the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages.

"The (marriage) law is already there. This just puts it in the constitution. We're pleased that the law will now be protected," said Susan Roylance, president of Yes! for Marriage, one of three campaigns supporting the amendment.

Amendment 3, which takes effect Jan. 1, reads:

• Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman.

• No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect.

Scott McCoy, head of the Don't Amend Alliance, which tried to defeat the amendment, said the defeat was a victory in a way, because it brought the gay and lesbian community and its allies together. The campaign had also received support from unlikely sources, such as talk show host Doug Wright and all three attorney general candidates, including GOP Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

"We opened people's minds to the fact that gay and lesbian families here deserve equal protection," McCoy said. "The people who voted for this amendment have to remember this vote is deeply hurtful to gays and lesbians."

Amendment supporters received a boost in October when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement saying it "favors measures that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that do not confer legal status on any other sexual relationship."

Utah was one of 11 states voting on such an amendment Tuesday, and at press time, every amendment seemed headed to victory.

Dani Eyer, director of the Utah ACLU, said the disappointing results are "most likely a reaction to the inevitability of legal gay marriage in the future, and an anxious attempt to maintain the discriminatory status quo."

Eyer said in a nation where there are now several states that constitutionally ban same-sex marriage, civil rights groups like the ACLU, will be "careful as to where and when they bring legal action on this."

"I think there's some merit in waiting for the people to catch up with the concept," Eyer said. Meanwhile, she predicted, "real people will suffer real harm as a result of this."

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