No other constitutional amendment has taken away rights and engaged in "social engineering" except for Prohibition, which was later repealed, said Scott McCoy, a Salt Lake attorney. McCoy and his partner Mark Barr were joined in a "civil union" in Vermont, as well as in a religious ceremony.

In creating the Constitution, McCoy said, "the supposedly divinely inspired framers made the very conscious decision to leave the issues of family and family law to the states."

The issue of who can get married in the United States has never been a federal one, he added.

"The other thing that is particularly troubling to me about this amendment is that even though it doesn't explicitly discriminate against gays and lesbians, it implicitly does. . . . And if it's OK to discriminate against them in marriage, why not housing and employment?"

Bush's proposed amendment will allow the people to decide the meaning of marriage, not the courts, said Richard Wilkins, a Brigham Young University law professor who recently testified to the Utah House about Utah's proposed same-sex marriage ban.

No matter what measures lawmakers take, courts across America — including the U.S. Supreme Court — are lining up to strike down laws whereby government intrudes on private sexual behavior, Wilkins said.

California, Vermont, New Jersey and Hawaii now have laws on the books offering some level of legal recognition to gay and lesbian couples, whether they be civil unions, domestic partnerships or reciprocal beneficiaries. And the Massachusetts Supreme Court recently ordered that state's legislature to allow such unions.

That decision was rooted in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law. The court ruled, in effect, that government has no right to interfere in the most private aspects of people's sexual lives.

"I think the events of the last six through eight months should make it clear to every American that absent a constitutional amendment . . . the meaning of marriage will be established by judges, not by them," Wilkins said.

"Marriage is one of those things that really ought to reflect democratic values. We amend the Constitution to ensure that."

Instead of opting to amend the Constitution, Congress should use the Defense of Marriage Act to prohibit federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court from ruling on any state marriage laws, said Gayle Ruzicka, president of the Utah Eagle Forum.

"Congress has some things they can do without amending the U.S. Constitution," Ruzicka said. "I think the states should amend their constitutions, and Congress could amend DOMA . . . that could be done in a couple of months."