Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday reiterated that including gay and lesbian couples in immigration reform would doom the current effort to failure.

Rubio made his remarks shortly after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy submitted two amendments to proposed immigration reform legislation by the so-called “gang of eight” senators.

“For immigration reform to be truly comprehensive, it must include protections for all families,” Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, said in a statement. “We must end the discrimination that gay and lesbian families face in our immigration law.”

One amendment was expected; the second had gay rights groups cheering.

Under the current law, a gay American citizen cannot sponsor an immigrant spouse for citizenship due to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prevents the federal government from recognizing such marriages. Leahy's expected amendment would allow a gay U.S. citizen the ability to seek a visa for a spouse by creating a new category of “permanent partners.”

The second amendment seeks to create an exception to DOMA under immigration law by defining a person to be a married spouse if the marriage “is valid in the state in which the marriage was entered into” or, if “entered into outside of any state,” was valid in the state where entered into.

Rubio said in a statement that including gay couples in the measure “will ensure that it fails.”

Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), told BuzzFeed that the added amendment was “brilliant.”

“This is basically meant to ferret out the Republicans,” Sainz said. “If you believe in a federalism concept, then I love this because it really narrows, and makes more circumspect, the objections. It's hard to object to marriage, if they're already married. If you're not creating a whole other category of 'permanent partners,' then the objection, on their part, is much more difficult. I think it's a game-changer.”

President Barack Obama earlier said that he supports gay-inclusive language in the bill, but would not rule out signing an immigration bill in which the provision is not included.

(Related: Obama supports move to include gays in immigration bill.)