With all the excitement of marriage-equality legislation in Illinois and Rhode Island, Indiana’s prospective ban on gay marriage has been flying under the radar.
Indiana Senate President David Long (R-Fort Wayne) announced this week that he is “still deciding” whether or not to bring up for debate a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Long says he’s waiting to see how the Supreme Court rules on two key marriage-equality cases.
“We will wait for that legal opinion, and the speaker and I will huddle again and talk about it, and we’ll talk about it with our caucuses,” Long told the Courier Press. The measure passed both houses of the General Assembly in 2011—if lawmakers approve the bill again before 2014, it will appear on a voter referendum in the November 2014.
But the National Organization for Marriage isn’t wasting any time trying to scrounge up support for the hateful Indiana Marriage Amendment. NOM honcho Brian Brown sent a plea to his drones:
How about we take this to the next level?
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The amendment was passed by the legislature in 2011, and needs just one more legislative approval before going to voters in 2014.
But gay marriage activists and their allies in the media are playing up opposition to the amendment — trying to persuade House and Senate leadership to postpone a vote on the measure. Most recently, a group of liberal clergy — representing groups such as the United Church of Christ, LifeJourney Church (a Metropolitan Community Church whose website indicates it was founded by “18 devout gay Christians”), and The Church Within, among others — gained airtime with a public letter urging the legislature to reject the marriage amendment.
With substantial Republican majorities in both houses, the amendment stands a good chance of passage if brought to a vote, but recent reports indicate that Senate President Pro Tem David Long (R-Fort Wayne) is hedging on whether he will allow the amendment to be voted on in the Senate.
Brown is asking members in Indiana to email their legislators, as well as Long and House Speaker Brian Bosna. If this carpet-bagger nauseates you as much as he does us, consider donating to Equality Indiana or other regional LGBT groups working to get this bill killed.
And if you or your loved ones live in the Hoosier State, for God’s sake, contact your local representative.
EGO
It is time for NOM to stop the bigotry and move up to modern times. The alternative
is for NOM to register as an unequal rights advocate and they must pay all of gay
peoples taxes.
Joetx
Sadly, I think a constitutional amendment will get passed in Indiana. Indiana is the Deep South of the Midwest.
smileyeagle1021
@Joetx: It’s called fly over country for a reason…
Someday it may become a state worth something, but for now, it is a pretty view from
35000 feet.
bertie
Joetx and smileyeagle1021–
If that’s sort of solidarity we can expect, the gay community deserves every setback it gets. After all, why show support for the challenges gays are facing in a state when you can always be condescending?!
Indiana sure as heck ain’t Texas–and if it were the “Deep South”, wouldn’t it have passed an anti-gay marriage amendment years ago, like virtually all the southern states did, and Indiana’s neighboring states of Ohio and Michigan already have?
There’s a libertarian streak in Indiana that indicates–according to a recent poll conducted by Ball State University–that 56% don’t approve of a constitutional ban. Our very fiscally conservative governor Mitch Daniels very audibly wanted to “declare a truce on moral issues” and clearly made no effort to help pass the ban. Sorry you feel it’s flyover country, but, living out East now, I can assure you that–even with their obvious advantages–there’s plenty that ain’t so pretty about the coasts. After all, if people really wanted to live in the Northeastern states, why are they typically among the slowest growing in the country?
FStratford
@bertie:
I agree with you that midwestern states get a bad rap… but your state’s republicans pick horrible candidates: Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s answer to “legitimate rape” defenders lioke Todd Akin and Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachman, for instance, come to mind.
Well, he didn’t win. So that’s good. But he should not have won a major party nomination in the first place.
Joetx
@bertie: Of course TX has its anti-gay problems, as does most of the country. That doesn’t change my perception that, even among the Midwest, IN is quite backwards.
Daniels is a major league a$$hole of a governor. Right up there w/ Rick Perry. Ugh.
I always hear how people say their state is a “live & let live” type of state, only to see their state brethren pass an anti-gay constitutional amendment. I still stand by my prediction that it’ll pass in IN.
gaym50ish
NOM usually tries to hide the fact that it is the force behind state anti-marriage-equality campaigns. Here in Washington state, where gay marriage was made legal by a vote of the people in November, Preserve Marriage Washington had tried to portray itself as a local grassroots campaign headed by a local chairman, Joseph Backholm, when in fact it was a front for NOM.
However, Backholm’s statement conceding defeat was clearly written by NOM: “Our opponents and some in the media will try to portray this election as a turning point, but it’s not a turning point to win on your home turf.”
The implication was that the gay-rights campaign called Washington United for Marriage was on its home turf (it was), but that NOM’s Preserve Marriage Washington was not.
jaack
Brian Brown, NOM chief,is a money grubbing Stooge for the right wing, the crazy Christians who want to ram their dogma down your throat or up your ass. Brown got more than $500,000 from NOM and an affiliate claiming to work 40 hours for EACH plus speaking engagements. How’s he got enough stamina just to be a husband who hates people he doesn’t know so much? Not very Christian of him. One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.[ Golden rule indeed $$$] There are at least 2 Federal court have ruled that states have no complelling interest to discriminate against its citizen. Just Brown with an agenda that is driven by MONEY and only MONEY.