Amid a flurry of last-minute schedule changes and language modifications, the state House narrowly passed a bill Monday evening that calls for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The marriage amendment has become the centerpiece of this week’s legislative session devoted to constitutional amendments. After passing by voice vote in the House Rules Committee, the amendment passed the full House, 75-42, following a lengthy debate.

In response to pressure from Democrats, Republican sponsors tried to take a political element out of the equation by scheduling the amendment referendum for the primary election in May rather than the General Election in November. Democrats reportedly had worried that a ballot question in November would prompt greater turnout among conservative voters, hurting Democratic candidates.

Republicans also added a provision meant to ease liberals’ fears that the amendment would ban private businesses from offering domestic partner benefits to their homosexual employees. The new version clarifies that it doesn’t “prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party.”

The amendment’s next stop is the state Senate, scheduled for debate Tuesday. If it wins approval, the amendment would appear on the ballot in 2012. Proposed amendments must be passed by a three-fifths majority of both legislative chambers before going to a vote of the people for final approval.

“This is about putting a question to the people,” said House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, at a press conference hours before the vote in the House. “This is about something that has been going on for decades, and this is an opportunity to let the people make a decision on this and to respect the will of the people.”

House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, said the amendment is needed to clarify North Carolina law in response to same-sex marriage legalization in other states and to head off intervention from activist judges.

Democrats, on the other hand, said the amendment would write discrimination into the state constitution. “It’s not necessary, and it will have consequences for jobs, because North Carolina will not be as attractive a state to the cutting edge corporations in our economy,” said Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham.

In addition to outlawing same-sex marriage, the amendment could ban civil unions and domestic partner benefits for the same-sex partners of government workers.

Rep. Glen Bradley, R-Franklin, was one of three members of the Republican caucus who didn’t vote. After speaking against the measure, Bradley ran an amendment to the bill — which failed 43-71 — that would have revised the ballot question to query whether voters wanted to remove government from marriage entirely.

“Marriage belongs to God exclusively and the state has no business doling out permission for her citizens to wed,” Bradley said. He added that most of Americans’ marital woes are because of government involvement in marriage.

Ten Democrats joined the remaining Republicans in passing the amendment.

Aside from the marriage amendment, lawmakers are expected to consider at least two other amendments — the first term limiting top leaders in the General Assembly, and the other revising governance of the state Department of Public Instruction.

The Senate passed a revamped version of the term-limits bill Monday that doubles the number of terms that the House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tem may serve. The original version limited a single legislator to no more than two consecutive terms in one of those positions; the new one extends that to four terms.

The House is scheduled to debate the measure today.

Tillis said that legislative leaders aim to adjourn no later than Wednesday.

David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.