Privacy advocates are perfectly free to reason that somehow, implicit in the "spirit" of the Constitution, there is something that permits the destruction of fetal life in deference to the private rights of women. But that is on the order of saying that somewhere in the bowels of Christianity there must be some inchoate provision against consigning anybody to hellfire. Such a position might be taken, pleading the infinite exercise of God's love. But it lieth not in any Christian catechism, no more in any constitutional document that abortion is an absolute prerogative of a putative mother.
If the Supreme Court is going to continue to perform as a standing constitutional convention, then it becomes a conservative warrant to employ constitutional defenses. Seventeen amendments were passed after the Bill of Rights was promulgated, the most important of which were of course the amendments that forbade slavery and extended full rights of citizenship to women.
The necessary amendment need go no further, nor should go any further, than to limit the application of the full-faith-and-credit clause to exclude any requirement to abide by laws or judicial findings authorizing same-sex marriage. If individual states wish to authorize civil unions between members of the same sex, they would be free to do so, but not free to plead immunities particular to their own state as extending to all 50 states.
This is a tough one for President Bush. But we usefully remind ourselves that the vote of the executive is irrelevant in constitutional amendments. The (required) two-thirds vote of the two branches of the legislature are outside the reach of a presidential veto. But, running for re-election, Mr. Bush's leadership in promoting this defense of marriage would figure prominently in the campaign for approval by three-quarters of the state legislatures.