[lugsoul]

Go back to con law class. The judiciary is not the only branch that interprets constitutions.

And the law would obviously prevent construction of state constitutions in various ways. For example, if a legislature purposefully drew a legal distinction that could not survive an equal protection challenge, the amendment would prevent any construction that allowed such a successful challenge.

[goldstategop]

Its in the provision about construing Federal and State Constitutions. The legislature makes the laws, the executive enforces them and the judiciary interprets (or if you like, construes) them. So the courts are forbidden from interpreting marriage to mean anything other than between a man and a woman. Nothing obtuse with that reading. It doesn't say anything about the laws the state legislature can make, as long as it doesn't call marriage something it isn't.

[tjwmason]

The judiciary is not the only branch that interprets constitutions.

I never said that it was. I merely stated that the activist elements of the judiciary are the targets of the amendment.

The point is that if a state wishes to create a civil partnership (or whatever term) they can do so - as long as it is not part of the constitution.