Other sources have reported this at greater length, but for posterity on this blog, I’ll just note that HJR 3 / 6 and its “splainin” companion bill passed 9 – 3. The committee heard a great deal of testimony, but apparently the proponents who ultimately voted in favor of the measure did not ask many questions. As Mary Beth Schneider, formerly of the Star, pointed out, when proponents don’t ask questions, they know they have the votes.
And, of course, it should be no surprise that the votes were secure before the hearing. Forced with a choice between the schoolyard maxims of playing by the rules and “if at first you don’t succeed,” Speaker Bosma went with the latter, demonstrating that getting a prohibition on same sex marriages, civil unions, and other legal statuses substantially similar to marriage into the state constitution is of a high priority. After the black eye of not being able to get the votes in the House Judiciary Committee, he took the very unusual, but not unprecedented step of moving a bill amending the Constitution into the Elections committee. Which, in a sense, is appropriate. This legislation is a political act, not a sound legal approach to governing.
I’ll borrow a tweet made by Cathy Day, a Ball State English professor: “Every college, every major employer, every cultural organization in this state said, ‘Don’t do this to Indiana.’ And they did.”
Did Taylor and Anderson oppose HJR3? Did Wal-Mart oppose HJR3?
While I hate to purport this, Freedom’s right, he is right on this one. I think the professor should have stated – every secular college/ university and non-religiously fervent major employer in the state. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it though…
Would it be better if in her 140 characters she said, “Nearly”? Point is, the ones testifying against it were giving well-reasoned discussions of the effects it will have on drawing the best and brightest to Indiana, a problem in the best of times, as well as the real-life effects it has on people — not the fake effects of “IT RUINS MARRIAGE!” Meanwhile, on the pro side you mostly had people who said they don’t like it because it’s icky, and how single and divorced parents aren’t capable of raising children right, and how marriage is only for procreation (tell that to my brother and his wife in Indiana, who have no children and don’t plan to), and that guy who was babbling about how this will lead to “throuples.”
Why do they even bother having a hearing? The Republicans don’t care what Hoosiers want.
Wow didn’t anyone read Doug'[s post. This is nothing but a political move and means little to nothing. Hmmm instead of testimony why the proponents for this bill just go sing a song! Might work better and all of us married people would understand instantly why gay people want a marriage license!
With apologies to the departed Hank Williams Senior! I changed wife to partner and sweet woman to sweet guy.
Seems like it works for me! Everybody sing along!
If my partner and I are fussin’, brother that’s our right
‘Cause me and that sweet guy wants a license to fight
Why don’t you mind your own business
(Mind your own business)
‘Cause if you mind your business, then you won’t be mindin’ mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfQ66rmHA5g
close as I could come to Hank Williams – Jimmy Dean singing with his band and no commericals…
I bet I am talking to myself on my last post. Oh what my dad used to say “Good humor is lost on the masses”.
But think of all the jobs that will be created with this amendment!
Jobs, schmobs, I’d rather be freer than richer, and gay marriage is a whopper of a whole slate of tyrannical intrusions and limitations on freedom that are just waiting to attack. Keeping gay marriage out of Indiana keeps us all substantially freer.
Make no mistake, folks, gay marriage and “marriage equality” may sound innocuous to the untrained, but gay marriage is a trojan horse that will do permanent damage to America.
If Bosma or his staffers are reading this, keep up the good fight. We need to ensure that gay marriage does not become 50-state legal, so that we can keep the deluge of gay marriage “equality” lawsuits, laws, regulations, minority status claims and set-asides from drowning us all.
If gay marriage becomes 50-state legal, they’ll be domesticating every wacky ruling out of the 9th Circuit into the Heartland of America, and your daughter will be reading “Gloria Goes to Gay Pride” at school.
http://www.amazon.com/Gloria-Goes-To-Gay-Pride/dp/1555831850
Riveting secular scholarship there.
Feel free to ask for help with the big words.
No need.
Look at the opinion polls towards gay marriage – it’s not trending towards people being against it.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/162689/record-high-say-gay-lesbian-relations-morally.aspx
Throw in a look at the demographic attitudes towards gay marriage done by Republican and Democratic pollsters: http://freemarry.3cdn.net/3936016bf7f7dc8b20_lpm6ibxn4.pdf
The second link has statements like
I mean, the scare tactics are cute, but the war’s over. Only the old and religious support bans on same-sex marriage, and the numbers of each are dropping by the day.
I said it before and I will say it again – if you want to save marriage, you should be getting it out of the government’s hands, not making a really futile gesture that will either be overturned in the courts or voted out by younger voters who don’t agree with you.
And it might explain Shelia Kennedy’s latest blog post:
I would suspect the likes of Bosma and Turner have read the same numbers, and they know the war is over, too. All they can do, like a basketball team down 10 with two minutes to go, is foul and extend the clock. But that explains the whole crusade, and it is a crusade — crap laws and bills like voter ID, restricting early voting and polling, enabling police harassment of immigrants, draining money from public education to prop up declining private schools and/or finance more malleable charter schools, forcing the teaching of freakin’ cursive writing, finding ways to expand conservative Christianity in the public sphere, the chafing under the constant reminder of seeing a black guy in the White House. The straight, white male Republican knows time is working against him, and add to that the Sunday morning preaching how all of these is destroying our moral fiber and bringing on the end times, and this is what you get. All though the culture wars — from the 1960s on — anyone who isn’t a straight, white Christian conservative has way underestimated the passion that population brings to the “culture war,” to the point of others not recognizing for a long time someone was fighting one.
Freedom: I fail to see how telling someone they can or cannot do something makes you “freer” or what “tyrannical intrusions” would also come from – well, doubling up the existing law (you do know it is already illegal for homosexual individuals to marry in Indiana, right?).
Freedom, I issue you a challenge (and please don’t spout off that you’re not going to do research for me): With equal marriage being the law in now more than 1/3 of the States, please give me some examples of what tyrannical intrusions have resulted in those States because equal marriage has been allowed/ recognized.
Dave: If I tell you you can’t kill me or steal my food, land and property, I’m freer. If I keep you from imposing a range of nutty government programs and requirements, I’m freer.
Dave:
This is what’s coming:
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/marriage/effects_of_ssm_2012/SSM_Mass_2012.pdf
We don’t have America, any more, with any of that. Question for you: Will you stand with America and oppose each and every depravity listed in that report?
Well, I think you’ve summed up everything we ever need to know about you in one comment/ pdf Freedom. Thanks for playing. Please exit to your right. That’s your FAR far right.
Oh, this guy?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-7-2008/mass–hysteria
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/05/552-brian-camenker.html
Dave:
Here’s the thing, after about five decades of observing precisely how Democrat, liberal, leftist, Communist activists work, everyone understands exactly what’s in store for us with gay marriage.
Your naive act simply isn’t credible.
Ah yes. When arguments break down, bring on the insults and the overstatement. You can take those, too, as you exit.
Can you liberals argue a point? When cornered, you toss out the most nonsensical gibberish and run away from the discussion. I truly don’t see how decent people can coexist with liberals.
I’m starting to suspect Poe’s Law is at work here.
Is not having the slightest clue what you’re talking about a badge of pride for you?
Communists are not liberals. Communists explicitly reject liberalism, in favor of individual liberty.
A legal question — if the legislature passed HJR3 (and HB 1153), would there be any standing to sue to prevent it from going on the ballot? Or would any litigant have to wait until after the November vote?
I think the only valid way to keep it off the ballot is if they amend it- and the court says that means it’s substantially not similar to the thing they passed in 2011. Believe me, if they amend, they better not try to get it on the 2014 ballot.
So say they do vote to cut the second sentence off HJR3. Does that count as “substantially not similar”? Or, at least, does it count enough to build a case on?
Opponents could ask for a preliminary injunction on the ballot measure (basically what happened to in Crawford v. Marion County – i.e. voter ID law). Unfortunately one of the elements needed for a prelim injunction/ temp. restraining order is that there is likely irreparable harm to the movant with no adequate remedy at law if the injunction is denied. Since there are other ways to challenge the law, I doubt that opponents of the amendment would try to defeat its placement on the ballot. Also, it could be defeated at the ballot which would increase the likelihood of the amendment ever being brought up again by its proponents.
From recent news stories, I guess Bosma’s people knew that it had to be now or never. Per Joe’s comment above, analysis of the change in public opinion (such as FiveThirtyEight Blog) projected that Indiana supporters of marriage equality will be in the majority by 2016.
Btw – update – the House will take up both measures at 1:30 Monday – I don’t think they meet on. Friday. I believe that me s it would be open for 2nd reading amendments – which could prove instructive as to where the final vote lies.
WFYI has a poll on this page: http://www.wfyi.org/programs/indiana-week-in-review. “Did Speaker Bosma abuse his power [by moving the bill from the Judiciary Committee to the Election Committee]?”
It was in the appropriate committee to review the legislation. After careful review they found they could not, in good conscience, pass it, so it was moved to an irrelevant committee that was guaranteed to pass it.
Exercise of power or abuse of power?