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How about this as an amendment.

The privilege of defining marriage is reserved to the states and the people and the SCOTUS can keep it's judicial activist nose out of that business.

The privilege of defining marriage is reserved to the states and the people and the SCOTUS can keep it's judicial activist nose out of that business.

*grin* That works. Better yet, replace "defining marriage" with "governing those things not explicitly stated as the federal government's domain per the US Constitution"?

Your language has the merit of being "moderate" in the sense of only restoring the status quo ante and derailing where this may well be all heading, rather than perempting the marriage issue by putting it into the constitution, as one man and one woman, which I cannot and will not support.

However, I don't think disparate laws in the states is sustainable in this mobile country of ours. Thus I would suggest some language to the effect that nothing in the constitution shall be construed to preclude the power of the states to pass their own laws regarding who is eligible for marriage, but Congress shall have the right to adopt a national standard, which shall preempt the laws of the states to the extent inconsistent therewith. Otherwise, without so empowering Congress (and it is not clear Congress has the power), we have full faith and credit issues, as well as a policy mess. Exorcising the transcendental language that Scalia observed "ate the law," and those three words in Kennedy's opinion about "the demeaning of the existence," is tempting, but no, that won't fly.

The privilege of defining marriage is reserved to the states and the people and the SCOTUS can keep it's judicial activist nose out of that business.

I move that we insert the phrase "big, fat" before the word "judical."