Warren and Jim Redman-Gress have a 19-year relationship that has outlasted many marriages, though they are prohibited by South Carolina law from getting married themselves.

Warren Redman-Gress hopes the Palmetto State will someday allow same-sex couples to marry or form civil unions, but a proposed amendment to the state constitution is aimed at making sure that never happens.

While South Carolina already prohibits same-sex marriage, amending the constitution to forbid the recognition of such marriages or civil unions could keep the courts, and the Legislature, from changing the law in the future.

"We felt it would provide a little bit of a firewall in South Carolina," said Oran Smith of the Palmetto Family Council, which led the push for the proposed amendment.

Voters will see the referendum on the ballot in the fall of 2006, giving opponents and supporters about a year and a half to rally state residents to their side.

"We believe marriage, to be truly marriage in the most normal sense, is between a man and a woman," Smith said.

"We believe there is definitely a threat to the definition."

Redman-Gress, a 48-year-old Charlestonian who is director of the Alliance for Full Acceptance, said he hopes that even opponents of gay marriage and civil unions will agree that changing the constitution is uncalled for.

"This is really a statement saying that we're going to take a whole group of citizens and say they shouldn't have equal protection under the law," he said.

The odds appear stacked, however, against those hoping to defeat the referendum. Similar constitutional amendments were on the ballot in 11 states last year, and each one passed.

"There's no question as to what the outcome will be," said Bill Moore, a political science professor at the College of Charleston. "You'll see it pass by a large majority in this state."

In the South Carolina Legislature, just one senator voted against putting the measure on the ballot, Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston.

The bill passed the House on a voice vote Tuesday.

Supporters of the proposed amendment said in legislative hearings that they fear a court could overturn South Carolina's ban on same-sex unions, just as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned that state's ban on gay marriage in 2003.

Smith said that's the concern, and that the issue is really about children.

"Same-sex marriage, once legal, would lead naturally to same-sex parenting and adoption," he said.

The Redman-Gresses, who are raising a son they adopted overseas, would seem to represent much of what the Palmetto Family Council fears.

"The community suffers when one segment of the population is discriminated against," said Warren Redman-Gress.

"I think there's always hope that it will go differently here."

 

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LEGISLATIVE REPORT