Romney pushes ban on gay nuptials

Gov. Mitt Romney took his fight against same-sex marriage to the national level Thursday in a Wall Street Journal column urging his fellow governors and state lawmakers to act quickly to define marriage as a heterosexual institution to avoid having a court decide otherwise.

"There are lessons from my state's experience that may help other states preserve the rightful participation of their legislatures and citizens and avoid the confusion now facing Massachusetts," Romney wrote in the column, "A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Marriage," published on the Journal's editorial page.

"We must now act to preserve the voice of the people and the representatives they elect," the column concluded.

In the article, which aides said Romney wrote prior to Wednesday's ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court, the Republican governor derided the SJC as a hotbed of judicial activism, calling its Nov. 18 ruling legalizing gay marriage "wrongly decided and deeply mistaken."

"This cannot happen again," Romney wrote. "It is imperative that we proceed with the legitimate process of amending our state constitution."

To date, 38 states have outlawed same-sex marriages, with Ohio giving approval on Wednesday. In addition, President Bill Clinton in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, which entitled states to ignore the marriage laws of other states deemed to be inconsistent with their own.

In his piece Thursday, Romney said the Defense of Marriage Act law is likely to be overthrown by "activist state courts."

"Amending the Constitution may be the best and most reliable way to prevent . . . confusion and preserve the institution of marriage," Romney wrote.

His aides said Romney was stopping short of a full endorsement of the Federal Marriage Amendment. The amendment is circulating in Congress, and President Bush is under pressure by conservatives to endorse it.

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's communications director, said Romney has not consulted with the White House as the gay marriage debate has unfolded in Massachusetts but has met with Harvard legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon. Still, the column "flows from the governor's pen," Fehrnstrom said. "It is uniquely his position and no one else's."

He said Romney is not calling for the federal amendment yet, only if "a patchwork of inconsistent marriages between states" becomes a reality.