States across America are concerned that their laws may not withstand the legal challenge of activist judges, so they are moving to strengthen their existing statutory language that recognizes marriage between a man and a woman or to amend their constitution to preserve the traditional understanding of marriage. The information on this page is intended to reflect the breadth of the movement to defend marriage throughout the United States.

* CT, MA, NJ, NM, NY, and RI do not have statutory or constitutional language preserving the traditional understanding of marriage. MA has legalized same-sex "marriage;" MA does have a pending constitutional amendment to preserve traditional marriage.

National marriage activity

Since the legalization of same-sex "marriage" in Massachusetts, 27 states adopted a constitutional amendment preserving traditional marriage on a ballot. All ballot measures except one have passed by considerable majorities. The loss in Arizona was close: 51.4% against and 48.6% in favor of the amendment. The Amendment passed in several states where same-sex "marriage" proponents thought such a measure could successfully be defeated, including South Dakota, Colorado and Wisconsin.

The map below is linked to a database of state laws and constitutional provisions that protect marriage. It also tracks the marriage-protecting measures under consideration in state legislatures.

Currently 6 states are moving to strengthen laws protecting marriage through constitutional amendment.

LANGUAGE OF MARRIAGE LEGISLATION
Prior to the activity during 2004, many states moved to protect marriage in their state codes in the late 1990s prompted by the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. While all of these states adopted language similar to the federal DOMA, there is some variation. The link below breaks down the federal DOMA language into its components and tracks the language used by each state.

States incorporating more components benefit from stronger statutory language. Examples of states with strong marriage statutes are Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, and Ohio. States with weaker marriage statutes include Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, South Dakota, and Vermont. Some states had already defined marriage in their state statutes prior to the passage of the federal DOMA. These states are Maryland, New Hampshire, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. It should also be noted that Connecticut’s common law recognizes marriage as between a man and a woman.

Regardless of whether a state's laws or constitutional provisions specifically define marriage and prohibit same sex "marriage," all states have consanguinity laws, prohibiting individuals from marrying their blood relations. Many states specifically prohibit a male from marrying his female blood relations and females from marrying her male blood relations.  Inherent in these laws is the understanding that marriage is between a man and a woman.

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