Next from the campaign of Andrew Hughes, the guy who's trying hard to unseat longtime Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott: a call to amend the U.S. Constitution!

Hughes's proposed amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to marry shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

It's a nice enough idea, and maybe it will get Hughes some more attention—especially if it helps him pick a fight with the religious conservatives of Washington's 7th Congressional District, whoever they are.

But really, it's hard to read this as anything more than (another) play for attention, since Hughes offers no roadmap to getting this thing passed. A constitutional amendment is one of the biggest lifts you can find in American politics. Unless Hughes can show how this could plausibly happen—and happen faster than court action, which is probably how gay marriage will next be addressed at the federal level—then I'm not all that interested.