Politics is unlike baseball in that sometimes it makes sense to take your eye off the ball. That’s because sometimes the real action isn’t where the players are focusing. It was in that spirit that Phoenix editor David Scharfenberg wrote his excellent piece on the marriage equality debate at the State House.
“When same-sex marriage legislation died in the General Assembly last summer without so much as a vote, attention focused on openly gay Speaker of the House Gordon Fox. Had he done enough?,” he wrote. “But if that’s part of the story, it is only part. The truth is Rhode Island’s same-sex marriage fight is centered not in the House, but in the Senate.”
It’s true. State House sources tell me that the House already has the votes to pass marriage equality and electoral soothsayers expect that chamber will pick up even more votes. However, Scharfenberg reports that the Senate seems locked down the other way. But he breaks down the Senate races that could help swing the balance of power in that chamber:
There are some electoral battles concerning marriage equality on the Senate side too.
We’ve already highlighted Laura Pisaturo’s challenge to Sen. Michael McCaffrey. She’s a lawyer and a lesbian in a longtime committed relationship and he’s the chairman of the judiciary committee and one of the biggest road blocks to gay marriage on Smith Hill.
Scharfenberg did too and he also found some others:
Two-term Democratic Senator Michael Pinga of West Warwick, a gay marriage opponent who won a close primary fight in 2010, is facing energetic same-sex nuptials supporter Adam Satchell in the primary.
Republican Senator Bethany Moura, a same-sex marriage opponent who represents Cumberland and Lincoln, faces a likely rematch with Democrat Ryan Pearson, a gay nuptials proponent she edged by just 343 votes last time.
And freshman Senator Glenford Shibley, a Coventry Republican opposed to gay nuptials, will have to run his first re-election campaign during a presidential tilt sure to drive Democrats to the polls in large numbers.
Then he finished his piece by bringing the attention to the most critical player in Rhode Island’s debate over marriage equality: Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed.
The focus, until now, has been on Speaker Fox and the legacy he’d like to leave. But the real question is: what kind of legacy does Paiva Weed want to build?
Does she want to be remembered as the principled defender of traditional marriage or as a leader who stepped aside, despite her own reservations, to let history make its jagged march to progress?
Some in Hawaii tried and failed to legislate this kind of new arrangement.
And recently:
“Federal Judge Upholds Traditional Marriage in Hawaii
Written by Dave Bohon
A federal judge has ruled in favor of a Hawaii law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, as well as a constitutional amendment that gives the state legislature the power to maintain the traditional definition of marriage.
The plaintiffs in the case, two lesbian women who wanted to “marry” and a separate homosexual man, had filed the federal lawsuit last year, arguing that the 1998 state constitutional amendment giving lawmakers power to legislate on behalf of traditional marriage, as well as the law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
But in his August 8 ruling Judge Alan C. Kay, a Reagan appointee, found that Hawaii’s legislature had a legitimate interest in legislating on behalf of traditional marriage. “Throughout history and societies, marriage has been connected with procreation and childrearing,” wrote Kay in his decision, which ran to 117 pages. “ … It follows that it is not beyond rational speculation to conclude that fundamentally altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions might result in undermining the societal understanding of the link between marriage, procreation, and family structure.” He added that “to suddenly constitutionalize the issue of same-sex marriage ‘would short-circuit’ the legislative actions that have been taking place in Hawaii…. Accordingly, because Hawaii’s marriage laws are rationally related to legitimate government interests, they do not violate the federal Constitution.”
The judge also noted that across the nation “citizens are engaged in a robust debate over this divisive social issue. If the traditional institution of marriage is to be reconstructed, as sought by the plaintiffs, it should be done by a democratically elected legislature or the people through a constitutional amendment,” rather than through the courts.”
As the debate continues many more Rhode Islanders will form their own opinions about this new way of describing and defining marriage. How they do this will based on one of two contradictory world views. The moral relativism of the progressive left, et al, as opposed to the God fearing morality of the Judeo-Christian right, et al.
At the end of the day you can try to take God out of the government but you can’t take God out of the people who are the government.