One week after Wisconsinites voted to add a ban on gay marriage to the constitution, a state senator started working on his own amendment to allow for state-approved civil unions and ban discrimination.
State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, the author of the proposed amendment, said the real problem with the ban is the second sentence, which states anything ""substantially similar"" to marriage will not be recognized as valid by the state.
""We're looking at keeping the first portion of the amendment intact, where marriage is between a man and woman, but at the same time trying to eliminate discrimination in the constitution,"" he said.
According to Erpenbach, regardless of sexual orientation, civil unions might not be recognized by the state. He said his amendment would give the Legislature the power to grant unmarried couples domestic rights.
Without his amendment, Erpenbach said it would be unconstitutional to grant these rights.
With the state Senate's shift to a Democratic majority, Erpenbach said he hopes this will help the odds of his amendment be adopted. However, he said he is unsure how well the amendment would do in the Republican controlled Assembly.
Erpenbach said he knows of many Democrats who would like to sign on, but the outcome of the amendment could depend on who is elected to replace former Assembly Speaker and Rep. John Gard, R- Peshtigo, who lost in his bid for U.S. Congress.
Tad Ottman, spokesperson for state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Junaeu, who authored the ban, said he was not sure how much support the new amendment would garner.
""I don't know how much Republican support there would be for something like that,"" he said.
Ottman said he anticipated a senator would introduce legislation, but said he did not think it had to be a constitutional amendment.
""The constitutional amendment itself does not preclude civil union or domestic partnerships from being created under existing state statutes. I'm not sure exactly ... what the constitutional issue [Erpenbach] feels might be there,"" he said.
The intention of the amendment is to preempt the process of courts to interpret the provision by modifying the text, according to Howard Schweber, UW-Madison assistant professor of political science.
The language of the amendment is, according to Schweber, ""so ambiguous"" that an amendment might be a ""clear contradiction"" to the referendum passed that would ultimately have to be interpreted by the courts. Schweber said a case could end up in court within the next few months.
""At some point the courts are going to have to interrupt that provision,"" he said. ""It is possible, even plausible, that they will interrupt that provision to mean that no benefits for same sex couples are allowed.""
