Wasting no time after the November elections, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard reintroduced his proposal for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage Monday, with a brand new, shiny moniker, the Marriage Protection Amendment. (Last year it was called the Federal Marriage Amendment.) Same song, same tune. The Colorado Republican denies he is targeting gays. He says he is targeting judges who otherwise will rule in favor of gay marriages. And the difference is???

Reaction to Allards’ action was swift among Coloradans:

Rep. Mark Udall, D-CO, expressed the anticipated Democratic objections to the proposed constitutional amendment.

“Marriage and family laws have always been defined by the states, and that’s where I think they should stay,” he said in a press release. “I do not think a constitutional amendment is needed to protect a state’s ability to define and regulate marriage-and that is not the real purpose of this amendment, which instead would put new limits on all the states.”

ProgressNow.Org (formerly the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network) put out this press release:

“With Colorado ranked the 48th worst out of the 50 states in the amount of Federal dollars it receives — Senator Allard should drop his ideological pursuit — and focus on Colorado and what it needs for his first piece of legislation this session,” said ProgressNow.Org Executive Director Michael Huttner.

Colorado Politics reads between the lines of the news stories and says the White House is running from the bill and Karl Rove has already killed it.

Nationally, the ACLU weighs in here:

The new measure being proposed by Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado is not about protecting marriage – it’s about forever shutting the door to marriage protections to loving, committed, gay and lesbian families. …Discrimination has no place in our society, a fact that is especially true when it comes to our most cherished of documents – the Constitution. To amend that fundamental document to include discrimination is an affront to all the values that make our nation great.

Amendments that would deny marriage protection to same-sex couples fail to uphold American values of equality and fairness for all. Such measures also fail to uphold the conservative values of federalism and limited government, which is why they are opposed by such prominent conservatives like former Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), the author of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act; Vice President Dick Cheney; Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA); Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and others.

Prediction: This bill is dead in the water.