The Traditional Values Coalition has introduced legislation in the California Legislature seeking to amend the California Constitution to eliminate domestic partnerships and ban same-sex marriage and civil unions.

Copies of the proposed amendment were issued by Assemblymember Ray Haynes, R-Murrieta, into the Assembly and Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, into the Senate on opening day of the legislative session, Dec. 6. The bill seeks to codify into the constitution, “The rights, responsibilities, benefits, and obligations of a marriage shall only be granted, bestowed, and conferred upon a man and a woman joined in a valid marriage, and may not be conferred upon any other union or partnership.”

Morrow told The Associated Press that an amendment was needed because “the institution of marriage is under attack in California.”

Benjamin Lopez, a lobbyist for the Anaheim-based evangelical Christian group, said the group will campaign “until the notion of homosexual marriage is pushed back into the closet where it belongs.”

Lopez told the Gay & Lesbian Times that they did not yet have figures showing support for the bill, called ACA 3 in the Assembly and SCA 1 in the Senate.

“This is simple bigotry cloaked as ‘traditional values’ that the majority of fair-minded Californians will reject,” said Darrel Cummings, chief of staff of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, in a Dec. 7 joint press release with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) condemning the announcement.

Assemblymember Mark Leno called the proposed amendment “just theater,” saying that it won’t get the two-thirds vote it needs in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Also on Dec. 6, Leno and House Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, introduced AB 19, which would change California’s definition of marriage to between “two persons.” The bill stalled in the Assembly Judiciary Committee last legislative session, pending an analysis of its fiscal impact. Emphasizing the intention that marriage should conform to the separation of church and state, the bill was renamed the Religious Freedom and California Civil Marriage Protection Act, and has been amended to include a section specifically stating that clergy members are not required to participate in a marriage ceremony that is against their beliefs.

Twenty-five fellow Assembly members and state senators have lent their support to AB 19, including Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Assemblymember Lori Saldaña, D-San Diego.

“California was the first state to rescind the ban on interracial marriage back in 1948,” Saldaña said in a statement. “Some states continued such bans for almost 20 more years before the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down. We must again show leadership in this latest discrimination battle.”

However, several moderate Democrats are opposed to legislation like AB 19, which they see as too much, too fast. “Not every Democrat represents Los Angeles or San Francisco,” Assemblymember Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There are a number of members [of the Democratic caucus] who think this is a mistake.”

A Dec. 9 New York Times article detailing the post-election backpedaling of some GLBT leaders and organizations – such as Representative Barney Frank, D-Mass. and the Human Rights Campaign – from the marriage equality issue drew scorn from Matt Foreman, executive director of the NGLTF, who compared the situation to backing down from a bully, saying “you’ll only get hit harder the next day.”

Foreman issued a statement the following day saying that pulling back from full marriage equality and bargaining for rights to make the nation “more comfortable politically” is akin to letting a bully win.

“If integration had been put to a popular vote, we would be living in a very different America today,” said Szeying Tan, co-chair of Marriage Equality California’s San Diego chapter. “… Equality is never too much, too fast.”

Polls taken earlier in the year showed roughly 70 percent of Californians oppose a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state even if they do not support marriage equality, and support some form of domestic partnership benefits or civil unions. Nationwide exit polls conducted on Nov. 2 showed 60 percent of the nation support expanding rights for same-sex couples.

“Every state supreme court that has considered whether marriage discrimination violates the equal protection clause of the State Constitutions – Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts – has concluded that marriage discrimination is unconstitutional,” Tan added.

A Traditional Values Coalition press release issued on Dec. 3 said the group’s intention is to codify into the California Constitution language similar to that of Proposition 22, passed four years ago by 61 percent of voters amid nationwide furor over potential same-sex marriage in Hawaii, which says that out-of-state marriages between a man and a woman only will be recognized in the state. The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chair of the Traditional Values Coalition, also said the amendment is an effort to prevent marriage equality activists from circumventing Proposition 22.

However, Tan said Sheldon’s coalition is trying to confuse the issue. “Prop 22 simply speaks to the issue of recognizing out-of-state marriages,” she explained. “It is in a completely different section of the California Family Code – Section 308. … There is already a law in the California Family Code Section 300 that defines marriage as between a man and a woman as of 1977.” Proposition 22 was initiated to close a loophole between California’s marriage law and other states, such as Hawaii, that were considering legalizing same-sex marriage.

Prior to 1977, California Civil Code 4100 defined marriage in gender-neutral terms. According to Marriage Equality California, the terminology was changed to specify gender while the Equal Rights Amendment was pending approval, due to opponents’ fear that giving women equal rights would induce a slippery slope towards same-sex marriage.

Thalia Zepatos, NGLTF’s deputy director of organizing and training, said the Traditional Values Coalition is expected to launch a well-funded campaign for a ballot initiative if the amendment fails in the Legislature. Sheldon told the San Francisco Chronicle he would not speculate what his group would do. A hearing on the constitutional validity of same-sex marriage is scheduled in San Francisco Superior Court Dec. 22.