No they wouldn't have. Because they understood it was an issue for the states. The problem with some that advocate a marriage amendment is they're wanting to play both sides of the fence. If you go down this path of passing an Amendment for every moral issue, you're going to have a Constitution with a list of Amendments stretching to the floor. It's a knee jerk reaction to a much larger issue. In fact the 10th Amendment clearly already covers marriage and many other issues.
Passing Amendments to catch every concern while it may alleviate a small concern for a short time will not fix the problem. The only way to fix the problem is to nominate judges that respect federalism. Personally I can only think of a handful that have been nominated in the past 20 years (Janice Rogers Brown and Clarence Thomas come to mind and Thomas only at times). And with the current leadership of both parties, I don't see the situation being reversed.
“If you go down this path of passing an Amendment for every moral issue, you’re going to have a Constitution with a list of Amendments stretching to the floor.”
Simply false, Bill.
Provide us a list of such proposed amendments now.
Doesn’t exist.
I’m aware of three you might consider similar:
* Constitutionally guarantee every prenatal child’s right to be born in all 50 states
* Constitutionally define marriage — because of its indispensable impact on society, even Western Civ — to be only between one man and one woman
* Constitutionally protect the Flag of the U.S. from physicial desecration
I’m both a strong advocate of the 10th Amendment and a supporter of all three of the above.
And I reject as ridiculous the suggestion that if the above three are enacted, amendments to outlaw birth control or the act of sodomy or spitting on the sidewalk will follow.
But given your argument, do you or don’t you support the 19th century amendment banning slavery. Please explain either way, since it obviously violated “federalism.”