Of course, no one seems to know the history of proposed constitutional amendments on marriage either.

If everyone was made aware of the 1912 Anti-Miscegenation Marriage Amendment, they might think better of this latest attempt to enshrine bigotry in the constitution by "God fearing folk".

Only once has an amendment concerned a social issue marginal to the Constitution's framework of government and the citizen's relation to it. The 18th amendment, ratified in 1919, banned the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Subsequent experience with constitutionally mandated sobriety showed the folly of writing marginal social values into the Constitution. Americans learned a lesson from that and revoked the 18th in a 21st amendment in 1933. Such basic values as the wrongfulness of murder or the immorality of prostitution aren't and shouldn't be embedded in constitutional amendments. Ordinary statutes do that work.

Some states burden their constitutions with all sorts of provisions to establish law on this or that. Alabama is the most notorious example. Adopted in 1901, Alabama's constitution has 287 Sections grouped into 17 Articles. Subsequently, the state has added 706 amendments to an already cumbersome document. The amendments intrude on local governance in hundreds of ways, from regulating bingo games in the town of Jasper to providing for the compensation of the Judge of Probate in Barbour County. As a result, Alabama's constitution is an embarrassment to the state.

The current race to protect traditional marriage is a conservative reaction to Lawrence v. Texas (the Supreme Court decision last June that struck down anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional). Bastions of conservative opinion from the Vatican to National Review and the Family Research Council have joined the backlash.

There have been close to 10,000 amendments proposed in Congress since 1789, and only a fraction of a percentage of those receive enough support to actually go through the constitutional ratification process. The success rate of an amendment to become part of the Constitution is less than 1%. The following is a very limited list of some of those proposed amendments that never left the halls of Congress:

1876: An attempt to abolish the United States Senate

1876: The forbidding of religious leaders from occupying a governmental office or receiving federal funding

1878: An Executive Council of Three should replace the office of President

1893: Renaming this nation the "United States of the Earth"

1893: Abolishing the United States Army and Navy

1894: Acknowledging that the Constitution recognize God and Jesus Christ as the supreme authorities in human affairs.

1912: Making marriage between races illegal

1914: Finding divorce to be illegal

1916: All acts of war should be put to a national vote. Anyone voting yes has to register as a volunteer for service in the United States Army

1933: An attempt to limit the personal wealth to $1 million

1938: The forbidding of drunkenness in the United States and all of its territories

1947: The income tax maximum for an individual should not exceed 25%

1948: The right of citizens to segregate themselves from others

The above should give everyone a better historical rationale for why the current debate is happening. It's political, folks. Pure and simple pandering to the religious right, who would like nothing more than to ban the constitution and our civil rule of law, erase any separation of the Christian (sic) church and our national state, and enshrining the bible (which denomination's bible they would use is never made clear of course) as the new document of governance and rule of law. That way, we can be governed by a Baptist Taliban.