Lungren's measure flatly declares that marriage "is a legal union of one man and one woman," and it removes the authority of all state and federal courts from saying otherwise.

"Let's have this issue answered for once and for all," Lungren declared.

Christopher Labonte, legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign, a lobbying group for gay and lesbian issues, dismissed Lungren's bill as "being all about politics."

"We're strongly opposed to any efforts to write discrimination into the Constitution," he said.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer in San Francisco overturned a 1977 state law barring same-sex marriages and a 2000 statewide initiative, Proposition 22, that prohibited California recognition of gay marriages in other states.

In his ruling, Kramer said the state cannot rely on its long history of recognizing only heterosexual marriages to justify the ban on gay unions, and that offering a domestic-partnership law for same-sex couples "smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal."

The legislation Lungren introduced, however, treks that path.

It would leave states open to establishing laws that Lungren described as "something short of marriage" to protect the civil interests of gay couples but limit the effects of such laws to the states that enact them.

That's not good enough, said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

"Marriage is more than a word," he said. "This is similar to other proposals that allow states to create marriage by another name. It plugs some of the holes but leaves others open."

But state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, who married her longtime partner last year in San Francisco, said Lungren is trying to draw attention to himself by picking on others.

"The concept should be marriage equity, not gay marriage," she said. "It seems Mr. Lungren is seeking constitutional discrimination."

Another gay legislator, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, called Lungren's bill "an assault on democracy" because of its elimination of judicial review of the issue.

"This is a significant departure from the way business has been in this country for a couple of hundred years," he said.

But Lungren said that amending the U.S. Constitution as he proposes is the only way to get state and federal courts out of the business of overruling what the public decides through ballot measures.

"The courts aren't democratic institutions," he said. By offering the legislation as a constitutional amendment requiring ratification by two-thirds of the states, he said, it would become in effect a "national referendum" on gay marriage that the courts cannot overturn.

"It's the only way the people retain the ability to make this decision," he said.

Lungren said that Kramer's ruling Monday played no role in the timing of his bill's introduction.

He said that he had pledged during his campaign for his 3rd District seat that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would be the first legislation he introduced after taking office, and the measure's introduction Thursday fulfills that pledge.

A constitutional provision limiting marriage to unions between a man and a woman is pending in the Senate, but Lungren's is the first in the House. It also goes further than the Senate bill by barring courts from any further consideration of the issue.

Lungren is a member of the House Judiciary Committee to which his legislation will be referred.

About the writer:
The Bee's David Whitney can be reached at (202) 383-0004 or dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com.