It is in motion to enact such an amendment, but the difficulties are manifest. Just to begin with, it would not be until 2006 that the reform could be done. That leaves two years in which same-sex unions will be sanctioned. And to undo these would raise constitutional questions and questions, also, of justice. If two men decide to contract a marriage under the revised understanding in Massachusetts, and two years later they are advised that the status quo ante has been reimposed, how, if we intend to do the right and fair thing, can the privileges they contracted be taken from them?
We are reaping a whirlwind, and direct intervention in the holy tabernacle of the U.S. Constitution is eminently justified. Either that, or we will simply be surrendering the evolution of the law into the hands of the judiciary. An interesting argument could be made to the effect that rule by justices might be an improvement on rule by members of Congress and state legislatures. Of course we are not attempting to make any such reassignment of power when we balk at a constitutional amendment, though in fact we are.
There is nothing in sight, given the decision of the Massachusetts court, and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court last June overturning the Texas sodomy law, to curb the evolution of "marriage" to signify simply an affectionate relationship between two or more people, with cross commitments of one kind or another. The rules for entering into such a union -- man-man, woman-woman, widowed sisters, father and son -- might differ here and there, so long as those differences were not held to violate the equal-protection clause of the Constitution, or other of its provisions. In the absence of an amendment, the fight is simply abandoned, and Darwinian mutations are, if not exactly encouraged, nevertheless indulged.
To argue that a constitutional amendment is radical, while acquiescence in the anarchy of the Massachusetts court is less than that, staggers the mind. It has become easier to amend the Sermon on the Mount than the Constitution, and it is strange and awful that passivity is urged in a republic of free people.