During the General Elections in November, Nevadans will have some additional constitutional questions to vote on, key here being whether to retain marriage in the constitution as between a man and a woman.
This is the first big attempt following the Supreme Court ruling of 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same sex marriages and it has been up to individual states to make changes to their constitutions.
In 2000 and 2002, residents voted 69 to 30% and 67 to 33% to approve an amendment to the Constitution, which states, “Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state.”
Assemblyman Nelson Araujo, a homosexual himself, presented Joint Resolution 2 to potentially repeal the language in 2017. The Assembly and Senate voted in 2017 and 2019 to allow the bill to go through to a vote.
The ballot question will read:
“Shall the Nevada Constitution be amended to: (1) remove an existing provision recognizing marriage as only between a male person and a female person and require the State of Nevada and its political subdivisions to recognize marriages of and issue marriage licenses to couples, regardless of gender; (2) require all legally valid marriages to be treated equally under the law; and (3) establish a right for religious organizations and clergy members to refuse to perform a marriage and provide that no person is entitled to make any claim against them for exercising that right?”
If the vote passes, Nevada would be the first state to change their constitution to legally recognize same sex marriages.
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