A citizen-initiated amendment to the Florida Constitution would ban “recogni[tion]” of same-sex marriages and any “other legal union,” whether same-sex or opposite-sex, “that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof.”

Although the “substantial equivalent” language seems tailor-made to forbid the establishment or recognition of civil unions, the antigay organization that is hawking the amendment, Florida4Marriage, has posted excerpts from a Fox News interview in which Stetson law professor Cynthia Hawkins-Leon claims that it does not apply to either domestic partnerships, an arguable point, or even civil unions, a more dubious proposition. Direct links to the Fox News clips on YouTube are here and here.

Florida4Marriage, of course, is deliberately imprecise in its own FAQ about the scope of its amendment.

The GOP-backed organization recently secured enough signatures on its petition to place the amendment on the ballot in November 2008. See the recent story on 365Gay.