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Filed under: Lifestyle, Local News, National News, Politics
Sun. February 7, 2010 8:44:32 AM
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Des Moines, IA — Iowa House Republicans will attempt to bring about a vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday, the Iowa Independent reported.
The paper is reporting that gay rights group One Iowa believes Republicans will attempt to fish a bill that seeks to define marriage as a heterosexual union in the Iowa Constitution out of committee and put it up for a floor vote. Committee members have not acted on Democratic state Representative Michael Reasoner's proposed bill that aims to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court's April 3, 2009 ruling legalizing gay marriage.
"While legislative leadership has stood firm in support of equality, extremists are attempting to overthrow House rules and push an anti-marriage amendment to the floor!" One Iowa said in an email alert.
The procedural move to pull a bill out of committee requires a 51 vote majority. Seven Democrats would have to cross the aisle and vote with Republicans for the procedure to succeed. At least one Democrat, Reasoner, is expected to do that.
Last year, Republicans made several attempts to bring a similar measure to the floor. Democratic leaders, however, managed to block the efforts.
Article provided in partnership with On Top Magazine
philipcfromnyc on Sunday, 2/7/2010
It is absolutely predictable that efforts to codify hatred and discrimination in the Iowa state constitution would be promoted by Republicans.
I am a US citizen by naturalization (I left South Africa in 1986 in disgust, because of the policy known to the world as apartheid). The US promised to be a land in which all persons are equals under the law -- and I naively bought into that lie, swallowing it without question.
The irony is that my fiscal ideology has always been conservative, without being radically so, and I would in all other respects have gravitated to the Republican Party. But then I noticed, over a period of years, that almost every anti-gay bill, initiative, or policy was endorsed by Republicans, whereas Democrats tended to be slightly (slightly) more progressive with respect to social issues. Every time I read about a measure to deny gay persons basic rights, I noticed that Republicans tended to vote in favour of such measures, whereas Democrats tended to vote against such measures. I also learned, very quickly, that the Republican Party was host to the extremist “evangelical” movement (the founders of which have connections to the current efforts in Uganda to enact a pogrom which, if permitted, will result in genocide (state-sponsored murder of all gay persons) in that nation).
In short, I learned, as a gay American, that the Republican Party does not want me.
It boggles my mind that some gay men and lesbians vote Republican, given the status of this party as a lapdog to the whim of the hard right in America. I remember watching footage of the Republican National Convention of 1992, in which Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan took to the podium and preached naked hatred directed towards gay Americans – hatred of the type represented by the Republicans in the Iowa state house, who wish to circumvent the recent decision (Varnum v. Brien (2008)) by the Iowa Supreme Court, finding that the prohibition of gay marriage violates the state constitution’s guarantees of the equal protection of the laws. I wanted to retch after watching this footage…
I believe that the Republicans in the House will fail on Monday – but these swine will be back, in due course, and will keep trying to snatch equality and happiness away from gay persons, merely because we are gay.
It is my hope that the time will come when these people will be called to account for their actions, and will hang their heads in shame…
PHILIP CHANDLER