Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Marriage Protection Amendment Fails in Senate

9 comments:

Travis said...

In 2004, Bill Frist said (long before the amendment failed the FIRST time!) that "sometimes a loss translates into a win."

No one paid much attention to him saying something like that. And, as it turns out, he was correct.

But 2006 is clearly different than 2004. It has not been an issue framed by supporters in a way that shows an intention of political harm against DEMOCRATS.....but instead, against REPUBLICANS.

This was never a real effort to pass, but an effort by the most conservative Republicans (and of course, Democrat Ben Nelson) to weed out the moderates in the party. I wonder how this will be used against McCain -- and indirectly against Guiliani in the '08 primaries.

Anonymous said...

OMG I LOL-ed

Courtney said...

I'm really hoping you saw the Daily Show last night.

Anonymous said...

Daily Show was awesome last night, Jon Stewart is funny, but he also makes a lot of sense.

It was going to fail, and they knew it was, this is just the GOP's way of telling the Evangelicals "we still got your back".

tully said...

I always get shivers down my spine when public opinion hinges itself on the sarcasm of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

I'll be happy if this is no longer a national issue. I've lost all energy on this topic for which I've never had much passion to begin with.

What I don't understand is how the Democrats didn't come through on this issue after Howard Dean told them they were against gay marriage!

Of course, I would have liked for the ban to have passed (which would have allowed for civil unions) as it is the only Constitutionally sound approach to this issue, but it never seemed like a likely occurance to begin with.

Answer me this Andy: Now that this is (appropriately) going to the states, how does a state's marriage license apply in states that do not allow gay marriage?

Andy said...

It doesn't. The Defense of Marriage Act that was passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by Clinton expressly says that no state is required to recognize marriages performed in another state.

For now.

Quinn: No, I didn't see The Daily Show yesterday, I didn't get home from the seminar until 10, at which point I began battling the cockroach, and then I blogged, and then I went to bed. I understand it's been archived on Malcontent, so I'll watch it tonight after I get home from the film festival.

Travis said...

Rick Scarborough (on MSNBC and former GOP Congressman) made a great point tonight.

He said that while he is against same-sex marriage, he is also against banning it because "what someone else does has no relevance to my life."

He made a specific call to Republicans and said, "Republicans must decide now whether they are for states rights, or against. We cannot be against states right on gay marriage, yet when it comes to abortion, say that we believe states to choose."

Interesting words that I think actually represent the true conservative opinion on this issue.

Anonymous said...

I find Scarborough to be one of the more sensible Republicans on TV, not just on this issue, but on a majority of issues.

Any Amendment would not only deny Marriage but also Civil Unions, thankfully even republicans are seeing the fallacy in putting discrimination into the Constitution.

I thought Chris Matthews made a good statement last night too, pretty much saying in the 200 years this country has been around, anytime we have adapted laws that discriminated against people (blacks and women), in the end this great Free country has turned those laws around.

Jim Crow was buried some 40 years ago, lets not revive his cousins.

Matthew said...

Good riddance, I say (although we all know it'll be back at some point. Republicans never saw a good piece of hate legislation that they didn't like to pound into the ground).

It will be interesting to see if the gay marriage amendments on some state ballots will have the same effect this year as they did in 2006, i.e. a huge fundamentalist voter turn-out.

Here in Illinois, we've kind of got one of those on the ballot. It's a non-binding referendum, so even if it passes, it won't actually do anything other than "send a message" to the state legislature. As our state legislature is currently (and will probably remain) Democratic, then it's doubtful such a measure would be enacted. And our incumbent Dem governor is up against a Republican challenger who marches in the annual Chicago gay pride parades.

So go figure.