Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The text of the amendment is pretty simple:

(a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.

(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Now, as the linked article in the intro points out, this language is such that, when taken literally (let's all be strict constructionists here, and leave allegations of intent to those pesky judicial activists), the state of Texas and its various counties and cities are forbidden from legally recognizing marriage of any form. But that's just the beginning; there are at least three major problems with this amendment that I can spot:

1. The "banning all marriage bit", of course. Just for clarity's sake, the issue here is that Texas now can't legally recognize any status "identical to marriage", but, of course, marriage is a status which is "identical to marriage". So marriage is out the window.
2. It doesn't stop the recognition of non-traditional relationships. Since the language of the amendment says "identical or similar to marriage", and defines marriage very explicitly, snarky commentators are left to point out that the union of one man with one man, or of one woman with one woman, or of forty-three women, one man and a horse, would be noticeably dissimilar to how Texas has defined marriage; remember, we're all good conservative strict constructionists here, and the letter of the law is all we're allowed to go by. So civil unions still aren't outlawed.
3. It has hypothetical conflicts with the American federal system. When I first read the text of the amendment, I stopped on the phrase "political subdivision". Now, obviously that's meant to describe counties, cities and other levels of government subordinate to the state, but then something in the back of my head said, "wait a minute... this is Texas!" One of the lesser-known facts about that state is that when it joined the Union it had been an independent nation for nearly ten years previously, and one of the terms of its annexation was that Texas could, if it wished at some future time, split into up to four states "of convenient size". Now this is a long shot, but consider what would happen if Texas were to split up tomorrow: those new states would, to my mind, certainly be "political subdivisions" of (the entity formerly known as) Texas, and so this amendment would attempt to assert authority over them. Which means that this amendment is in the uncomfortable position of possibly asserting dominance over the constitutions of other states, something which ought not be countenanced in this era of resurgent states' rights.

I'm sure there are more problems lurking in this thing, but that seems to me to be a good start. Now I'm going to go round up a couple score of women and a horse, and saddle up for Texas...