Marriage Quote by Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Campbell’s line is the sound of a politician threading a needle that shouldn’t exist: asserting moral moderation while owning a vote that helped codify exclusion. The first clause, “I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act,” functions like a credential in 1990s Washington: proof you can speak the era’s bipartisan language of “values” without spooking centrists. It’s also a preemptive confession, the kind that disarms critics by admitting the record before they can weaponize it.

Then comes the pivot: “but I do not believe we should institutionalize… by amending the Constitution.” The subtext is less conversion than triage. DOMA, in that moment, could be framed as statutory containment; a constitutional amendment would be permanent, louder, and harder to walk back. Campbell draws a bright line between discrimination that is politically expedient and discrimination that is structurally enshrined. He wants credit for restraint without abandoning the premise that gay marriage should be limited.

The phrase “institutionalize a form of discrimination” is doing heavy lifting, borrowing the moral vocabulary of civil rights to oppose a move favored by parts of his own coalition. And “any minority” is deliberately broad: it universalizes the warning, inviting listeners to imagine themselves as the next target. Context matters: as a Native American senator, Campbell carried an inherited skepticism toward constitutional majoritarianism. The quote’s power is its uneasy honesty: it reveals how civil rights progress often advances not by sudden enlightenment, but by politicians recognizing that some tools of exclusion are too blunt, too permanent, and too historically damning to use.