Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law at UCLA
The federal government should play its traditional role in defining marriage. In terms of legislating a definition of marriage, it should not do so. This is an area that has historically been left to the states. It is a violation of federalism for the federal government to now impose a definition of marriage on states by either passing legislation or amending the U.S. Constitution to include a definition of marriage.

However, federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, do have a constitutional role in ensuring that every state's marriage laws complies with the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court should make sure that every citizen's rights to privacy and equal protection under the laws are not violated by state marriage laws. The best reading of the U.S. Constitution is that these principles require that marital discrimination be brought to an end, and that gay and lesbians have the same right to civil marriage as enjoyed by heterosexuals.

Dwight Duncan, associate professor of law at Southern New England School of Law
Currently, the federal Defense of Marriage Act says that for purposes of federal law (tax, social security, military, immigration, etc.), marriage is only between a man and a woman. It also says that states will not be required to recognize the same-sex marriage of another state under the Full Faith and Credit clause of the United States Constitution. Gay activists have announced their intention to challenge the constitutionality of those provisions. Recent developments in family law, both in the United States and abroad, necessitate a national strategy to preserve marriage's central role in the creation, and formation, of our posterity.

Homosexual advocates are prepared to litigate tirelessly to force a new national consensus regarding marriage. Those who disagree strenuously with that agenda but who agree with most Americans and the consensus offered by history-across time and space and cultural and religious differences-that marriage is uniquely a relationship between the sexes, naturally related to procreation and the upbringing of children, need a democratic response that is just as national in scope.

Such a response is the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. The current version endorsed by President Bush makes clear that states can still, if they wish, enact civil unions legislatively and democratically. But the intention is to solidify the national consensus regarding the definition of marriage, and to prevent courts from judicially imposing same-sex marriage, as happened in Massachusetts, through constitutional-amendment-posing-as-interpretation. This approach is actually consistent with federalism: otherwise, one state may well dictate to the rest of the country its preferred definition of marriage, the way Nevada easy divorces once swept the country, giving us our culture of divorce.

Andrew Koppelman, professor of law and political science at Northwestern University
Very little. Under the American system of federalism, questions of family law, such as marriage, have always been reserved to the states. That's why opponents of same-sex marriage, such as President Bush, who want to stop any state from recognizing such marriages, have found it necessary to propose a constitutional amendment. If Congress passed a law against same-sex marriage, the courts would probably strike it down, because the federal government has no power to tell states which marriages to recognize. On the other hand, the federal government can control the scope of its own benefits, and the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 provides that same-sex married couples get none of the federal benefits of marriage. Same-sex spouses can't file joint tax returns. Same-sex spouses of federal employees don't get health benefits, life insurance, or the special compensation that's given to the widow or widower of an employee killed in the performance of duty. Same-sex spouses can't get Social Security survivor's benefits. Same-sex spouses are the only legally married spouses of American citizens who can face deportation as aliens. These discriminations are probably unconstitutional, because the Supreme Court has said that a law is invalid if it reflects a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.

Thomas Kohler, professor at Boston College Law School
Like all the other questions, this is a big matter to take-up in such a restricted space. Certainly, the federal government could play a significant role in defining marriage. In fact, Congress already has entered the arena with the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage for the purposes of the meaning of any act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation by any agency of the federal government, to mean only the union between a man and a woman. Thirty-eight states have enacted various defense of marriage acts as well. The most recent example is Ohio, which recently enacted a law that seeks to keep the state from having to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states.

Such laws raise a series of complicated constitutional issues. One approach might be to adopt a federal constitutional amendment that would define marriage as existing exclusively between a man and a woman, and that would ban any sort of civil union legislation. Such an approach is not free of constitutional conundrums. For example, in our federal system, marriage always has been a matter for the states. Certainly, there are cases like Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down a state statute prohibiting interracial marriages on equal protection grounds. The Court cannot declare a constitutional amendment unconstitutional, but getting such an amendment through Congress may not be easy. I think it doubtful that the federal government could regulate marriage or civil unions through statutes alone.

Gary Buseck, legal director at the gay rights group Lambda Legal
The federal government certainly can attempt to play a role in defining marriage and civil unions. The real question is should the federal government be in the business of defining marriage particularly when its efforts are designed to write discrimination into our charter of government through a dangerous and divisive constitutional amendment? The Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 notwithstanding, throughout all of American history it has always been considered the states' job to decide who is married and who is not unless the states discriminated in a way that violated fundamental federal constitutional rights.

The enactment of a federal constitutional amendment would be an utter contradiction of the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under the law. Any constitutional amendment seeking to limit the liberty and equality of one group of American citizens goes against the guiding principles of the Founders and flies in the face of the trajectory of more than 200 years of constitutional history.

There are some who say that offering an amendment that leaves room for civil unions is a fair compromise. But let there be no mistake-there is no moderate or fair way to take away the civil rights of a group of people.

Peter Sprigg, director of marriage and family studies at the Family Research Council
The Family Research Council supports the Federal Marriage Amendment as introduced by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. This amendment would insure that only the union of one man and one woman is legally recognized as "marriage" by any level of government in the United States-federal, state, or local. It would also insure that no court, at either the federal or state level, could require that either marriage or the legal rights and benefits of marriage be conferred upon any union other than that of one man and one woman.

We support legislation in Congress that would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue of marriage, in accordance with Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. However, we do not feel this legislation alone is sufficient to protect marriage, because it would do nothing to rein in the action of state courts that might order that civil marriage (as in Massachusetts) or the benefits of marriage (as in Vermont) be granted to homosexual couples.

We also vigorously support the federal Defense of Marriage Act enacted in 1996. It defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for all purposes under federal law, as well as declaring that states need not recognize homosexual civil "marriages" conducted in other states. DOMA, however, does not protect marriage from redefinition within an individual state, as FMA would. In addition, homosexual activists have long contended that DOMA is unconstitutional. Only an amendment can fully protect marriage against activist courts.