The current version of the Federal Marriage Amendment introduced in Congress (
"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.") is politically untenable. It bites off more than it can chew, simultaneously banning same-sex marriage
and civil unions conferring "the legal incidents of marriage", which are increasingly popular across the country.
Clearly, a compromise must be found. In the spirit of another famous compromise, I offer one below.
The new amendment would read as follows:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. The legal incidents of marriage shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of heterosexuals, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
This neatly solves the problem of homosexuals' claim to equal citizenship, though it does raise a new problem of how to account for untaxed gay Indians.