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Madison — While Wisconsin's constitutional ban on gay marriage faces a legal challenge in federal court, two Milwaukee lawmakers are launching an effort to get the Legislature to end the state's 7-year-old amendment.

On the eve of Valentine's Day, Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa and Sen. Tim Carpenter sought co-sponsors Thursday for the first legislative effort to repeal the state's 2006 constitutional amendment banning marriage and civil unions for gays.

The two lawmakers are both Democrats from Milwaukee; Carpenter is gay and Zamarripa is bisexual.

Crowded into the Senate parlor with a phalanx of fellow Democrats, Zamarripa and Carpenter said they wanted Wisconsin to break from Michigan, which still bans gay marriage, and move in the direction of Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, where it is legal.

Donna Winter agreed. A retired Madison police detective, she stood with her partner of 16 years, Liz Dannenbaum, and called for the right to marry the woman she loves.

"People have asked me if I'm going to get married in another state. No, I'm going to get married in the state I'm proud to live in," Winter said to applause.

The proposal would eliminate the constitution's ban on gay marriage and civil unions, but would not explicitly allow the practice. In addition to the constitution's ban, state law is generally viewed as prohibiting gay marriage because it describes the institution as being between a husband and wife.

Any proposal to change Wisconsin's charter faces a hard road — it must be approved by lawmakers in two consecutive sessions and then must be approved by voters in a statewide referendum. This attempt has little chance of passing that high bar, with the Legislature controlled by Republicans and the subject still controversial.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) made that plain just hours after the plan was unveiled when he said the proposal was unlikely to get a public hearing as the Legislature wraps up its session this spring.

Despite polls showing otherwise, Vos said he believed the views of voters on the issue was "fairly similar" to where it was when the amendment passed in 2006.

"Going back and rehashing things that have already been debated and pretty clearly decided is not the direction I want to go," he said. "I want to focus on moving forward, not rehashing every single thing that's happened in the past."

The repeal of the amendment is unlikely to advance in the Senate as well. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) was a lead sponsor of the 2006 marriage ban.

Of the 33 states with measures banning gay marriage, nearly all of those are constitutional amendments. So far, no state has voted to strike down such an amendment.

The repeal has the support of all Democrats in the state Senate and many in the Assembly. Zamarripa said she's not expecting initial support from Republican members of the Assembly.

"I believe that there's personal support on the other side of the aisle, but right now, it would be a lot of political capital to spend," she said.

The effort comes less than two weeks after four same-sex couples, with the help of the state and national American Civil Liberties Union, sued Gov. Scott Walker and other public officials in an attempt to overturn the amendment.

Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, a group that pushed for passing the marriage ban, said of Thursday's effort by Democrats: "It's certainly a fairer and more right way to undo the ban than running to the courts like the ACLU did."

Last week, Walker said he is focused on creating jobs in the state and not on social issues like the marriage ban.

"I haven't heard significant movement across the state to make an alteration on that one way or the other," Walker said then of the constitutional amendment.

In November 2006, 59% of Wisconsin voters approved a state constitutional amendment that says, "Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized."

A Marquette University Law School poll in October indicated 53% of Wisconsin voters would approve of same-sex marriage while 24% favored civil unions and 19% opposed legal recognition for same-sex unions.

In Iowa, courts overturned a same-sex marriage constitutional amendment in 2009. That same year, then-Gov. Jim Doyle and Democratic lawmakers passed a law allowing gay couples to register with counties so they could take family medical leave to care for each other during serious illnesses, make end-of-life decisions, have hospital visitation rights and receive about 30 other benefits. That law is being challenged by Appling in the state Supreme Court.

Winter said the partnership benefits have been helpful to her and Dannenbaum but fall short of those given to married couples.

Since last summer, Minnesota and Illinois passed legislation allowing marriage for gays and lesbians, leaving Michigan as the only bordering state that still bans such marriages.

Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.