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Marriage challenged in Texas constitution?
Posted: 11.18.2009 at 9:36 PM
Nastassia Tamari

Nastassia joined the news team in January of 2009. A native of California, she says she is loving the Lone Star state.

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Read more: Local, State, Politics, Community, Texas Constitutional Amendment, Same Sex Marriage, Gay Marriage, Chisum, Woodburn Watkins & Jackson

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If you are married could your marriage actually not exist in the eyes of the law?  How's that for a rude awakening. A 2005 Texas constitutional amendment was designed to ban gay marriages, but now one democratic candidate running for attorney general says it actually dissolves all marriages.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky says it's because of a phrase in Subsection "B."  It says "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

So we called Texas representative Warren Chisum, from Pampa, who was the author of that clause he says it clearly defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, that her assessment is wrong.

"All it does it say that if people of the same sex want to create a contract that achieves some of the same things that are in a marriage, they can do that, but they cannot call it a marriage," said Chisum.

We also checked with a family attorney who agrees, and doesn't understand how she got to her interpretation of the law.  "I think that she's a democratic candidate in a primarily republican state, trying to gather some attention, because I don't read it like she does, nor does anyone else," said Mike Watkins, from Woodburn, Watkins & Jackson, L.L.P