The Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to the Consideration of S. J. Resolution 1: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage (A.K.A.: Marriage Protection Amendment), failed to meet the two-third supermajority vote required, 49 to 48 opposed.

Find out how your Senators voted by following this link: http://www.senate.gov

"Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."

Demographers have marveled at the remarkable "retreat from marriage" witnessed in recent decades in the United States - and other industrialized countries. However, in a new study published in Population Studies, researchers at Pennsylvania State University conclude that though many young Americans are postponing marriage, relatively few are actually avoiding wedlock.

The Penn State scholars acknowledge that in the fall of the marriage rate during the final decades of the 20th century, many have discerned "a sea change in the social and demographic behaviour of Western populations ... brought about by fundamental shifts towards ideologies that emphasize individual autonomy."  These scholars' own analysis, however, suggests that the retreat from wedlock is actually more pronounced in Europe than in the United States, where almost all young adults still do eventually marry, even though at later ages than in the past.

That Americans are older when marrying than in the past is very clear: the Penn State researchers calculate that in 2000 the average age at first marriage was 28.3 years for grooms, 26.3 years for brides, compared to 23.0 years for grooms and 20.8 years for brides in 1970. However, the Penn State scholars' statistical model indicates that even though Americans coming of age at the turn of the 21st century have postponed wedlock, the overwhelming majority - 89% of men and 91% of women - will eventually marry.

Past generations of Americans, it is true, saw a higher percentage of men and women marry: among Americans who came of age at the end of the Sixties, 97% of men and 97% of women married. Thus, though the data do indicate "a real decline in marriage" in the United States, that decline is "considerably smaller" than it has appeared to demographers who have prematurely misinterpreted numbers indicating delayed marriage as evidence of permanent singleness. Properly adjusted, the numbers still attest to the abiding - if somewhat belated - attraction of marriage for 21st-century American men and women.