Tag: civil unions

A recent survey of Mississippi Republicans conducted by Public Policy Polling (pdf) found that a majority of them believe inter-racial marriage should be illegal. According to the poll, 46 percent of the Republicans told PPP staffers that interracial marriage should be illegal and 14 percent of them said they weren't sure. Only 40 percent of Mississippi Republicans believe interracial couples should be allowed to legally marry. The poll comes a week after Colorado Republicans voted down a bill that would have granted Colorado gay couples domestic partnership rights already granted automatically with marriage to straight people. The Republican lawmakers said the issue should be left to voters to decide.

In his weekly column at the Denver Archdiocese website, Archbishop Charles Chaput celebrated the death of state Senator Pat Steadman's same-sex civil unions bill. He said the bill was not about civil rights but about "securing legitimacy for personal behaviors that most societies and religious traditions have found problematic." He listed the names and addresses of the six Judiciary Committee Republicans who voted to kill the bill and asked Catholics to contact the lawmakers and thank them.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper sent a letter Thursday to gay rights group OneColorado in support of same-sex civil unions bill SB 172. The Governor had planned to attend a rally hosted by the group at the capitol. Hickenlooper couldn't make it and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee later killed the bill on a party line vote. "It’s important for you to know how important we think Senate Bill 172 is to Colorado," wrote Hickenlooper. "It’s pretty simple: What’s fair for one person should be fair for the next. Everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, should have the same legal rights."

During an emotional eight-hour hearing on same-sex civil unions at the capitol in Denver Thursday, a long list of witnesses on both sides of the issue told emotional stories of life as gay and transgender Americans. More than a few wept as they talked about shame, discrimination and systemic bias. Others quoting scripture warned of the end times the bill would surely hasten unto the Centennial State should it pass. The five committee Democrats took turns agreeing and disagreeing with witnesses, debating theology, Constitutional history and the horrors of the Jim Crow South and the Holocaust. The six members of the majority bloc Republicans on the committee, however, had little to say. They watched and listened and, without really elaborating their positions, voted as a bloc against sending the legislation to the full House for debate and a vote. They stone-cold killed the bill.

With competing rallies on opposite sides of the capitol--supporting and opposing civil unions--it was the action inside that mattered. On a party line vote, civil unions died in the House Judiciary Committee late last night.

The coming debate in the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on same-sex civil unions bill SB 172 will center on Republican arguments for and against the legislation. The debate scheduled to take place under the Dome in Denver Thursday will underline the dynamics shaping the larger national debate on gay rights-- a debate that now pits Republicans against Republicans because Democrats and Independents have already made up their minds on the matter.

Denver mayoral candidate Michael Hancock today issued a statement encouraging members of the Colorado House Judiciary Committee to approve the Colorado Civil Union Act and send it to the House floor for full consideration.

Colorado civil unions bill SB 172 may have passed out of the state Senate Thursday but the video shadow of the debate over the bill is growing on the internet. Berthoud Republican Senator Kevin Lundberg is drawing fact-checking and mockery for the discredited and reaching arguments he made against the bill on the floor of the Senate before his colleagues and the cameras of the Colorado Channel.

Senate Republicans delivered Pat Steadman's same-sex civil unions bill to the Republican-controlled House Thursday with momentum and a message. Although the twelve Republican men in the Senate voted against it, the three Republican women in the Senate voted in favor of the bill, making the case to leaders of the Republican-controlled House to take up the bill with good faith and allow it to move beyond committees and onto the floor of the House for a vote.

The gay and lesbian community are one step closer to being able to participate in state sanctioned unions after the Colorado Senate voted to pass on second reading SB 172. Democrats heralded the bill as a historic moment in the fight for civil rights and the protection of children.