Indiana Senate passed HJR 6, completing first-passage of anti-LGBTQ marriage constitutional amendment

On March 29, 2011, the Indiana Senate voted 40-10 to pass House Joint Resolution 6 (HJR 6), a proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman and providing that "a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized" in Indiana — language that would bar civil unions and domestic partnerships as well as same-sex marriage. The Indiana House of Representatives had passed the identical resolution 70-26 on February 15, 2011, so the Senate vote completed passage of HJR 6 by both chambers of the 2011 General Assembly. Sen. Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) sponsored the measure in the Senate, saying it would provide "maximum protection for the basic family unit of society." The Senate vote took place before an empty public gallery, which had been closed after protesters disrupted floor debate the day before.

Under Indiana's constitutional-amendment process, a proposed amendment must pass, in identical form, two separately-elected General Assemblies before going to a public referendum. HJR 6's passage by the 2011 General Assembly was therefore only the first of two required legislative passages — current Indiana law already statutorily barred same-sex marriage at the time, so the amendment's practical effect, had it been completed, would have been to entrench that exclusion (and the ban on civil unions) in the state constitution, placing it beyond the reach of ordinary legislative repeal.

Updates

2014-01-27 — Second passage attempt weakened, restarting the two-Assembly clock [1, 5]

When HJR 6 was reintroduced in the 2014 General Assembly as HJR-3, the Indiana House stripped the civil-unions-ban clause from the resolution on January 27, 2014 — a change in text that, under Indiana's process, required the two-Assembly identical-passage clock to restart rather than completing the second passage HJR 6 needed. That 2014 vote is recorded as a distinct entry (see GitLab issue #1466).

2015-06-26 — Effort mooted nationwide [5]

HJR-3 was never taken up again in the Indiana General Assembly after 2014. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, mooting the amendment effort. HJR 6/HJR-3 never achieved the required second identical passage and never reached a public referendum or the Indiana Constitution.