Marriage Doomed, Women and Heterosexuals Hardest Hit

Senate supporters of the Marriage Protection Amendment just lost the big vote, winning a mere 49 votes and failing to win cloture. They needed 67 to pass the amendment on to the states, but expected the Republican majority could scrape out 52 to 56 votes. The biggest surprise - New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg. The most conservative senator in New England changed his vote on the amendment to "no" because he could see firsthand that gay marriage wasn't hurting anyone.

Gregg said that in 2004, he believed the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in that state would undermine the prerogatives of other states, like his, to prohibit such unions.

"Fortunately, such legal pandemonium has not ensued," Gregg said in a statement. "The past two years have shown that federalism, not more federal laws, is a viable and preferable approach."

Comments

[SYNTAX ERROR]

Senate supporters of the Marriage Protection Amendment fell just lost the big vote,

Whaaaa???

[Clean Hands]

And in other news, the Moon will still rise and the Sun will still set.

Nothing has changed here. Except, of course, that the haters will now go after Gregg. On principal, of course.

[jf]

I don't understand Senate procedures.

They require a majority (51 votes needed) vote in order to then proceed with a cloture (60 votes needed) to vote on an amendment (67 votes required). I realize that anything that slows down the mighty Senate legislative machine is good, but this seems like a lot of steps that do nothing but offer chances for grandstanding.

[Ruthless]

Speaking of pandemonium: anarchy--true anarchy--leads to tranquility.
I likes tranquility.

In fact, my coffee cup says, "tranquility NOW"

[Clean Hands]

Give the man a cigar! jf, you just figured out the whole point of the Marriage Protection Ammendment kerfuffle.

[crimethink]

jf,

It's even stranger that they need a majority vote to proceed to the cloture vote, to proceed to another majority vote on a normal bill.

[ChicagoTom]

jf, and crimethink...

I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that they only needed a cloture vote (60) to bring it to the floor for a vote, at which point they would have needed a super-majority (67) to pass. Getting a simple majority was irrelevant in this case. I believe because there was a Dem filibuster, thats why a cloture vote was needed to bring it to the floor

[Clean Hands]

Whyinhell would the Dems bother to filibuster this steaming turd of an amendment? Are they all dope-smoking goatfuckers?

Oh, wait, we're talking about the Senate, here...

[dead_elvis]

Oh shit- the ink is slowly disappearing from my marriage certificate. They warned us this would happen, why didn't we listen!!!

[Eddy]

I may have to fire off an 'atta boy to Judd. I figure I've rebuked him enough for other things so...

[Smappy]

Well, this is just another example of activist legislators telling the American people which laws they can and can't have!

[thoreau]

Can my wife and I stay married to each other, or has our marriage just been undermined?

Can anybody tell me what's up on this? I'd hate to remain in a marriage that's been undermined, but I don't really know how to tell if it's been undermined or not.

[smacky]

thoreau,

The real question is, do you *feel* undermined?

Only time will tell.

[snicker]

[SR]

"Well, this is just another example of activist legislators telling the American people which laws they can and can't have!"

I would automatically think that's a joke, except that I've previously read this column and others from WND: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49666

Unless, of course, you have an agenda, and the openly gay legislators in California and across the country certainly do. They're supported by Democrats, as well as any Republicans/conservatives without the courage to stand against the onslaught.

* * *

In Sacramento, the bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee was authored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. She's one of six, openly gay, California legislators and actively writes and supports new laws pushing the gay agenda. Some pass, some don't, but the efforts continue. She admits this legislation has been in the works since 1995.

[Ken Shultz]

If they wanted to reverse perceptions, why not send up a token amendment to balance the budget instead?

[Derek Ashworth]

Note to Jon Raich: Sen. Gregg apparently lives by your teachings.

[Ruthless]

thoreau,
If you and your wife still enjoy playing "strip search the grannie" as do the Little Woman and I, then your marriage has not been undermined.

[Scott]

I awoke this morning to find that all of the sanctity had been drained from my marriage, I have been making calls all day and have still not found anyplace that sells replacement sanctity at a fair price, most of them want 10% of my gross income or more.

As a silver lining, I think that I can use the right wing rhetoric to my benefit when I file my next tax return. The value of my marriage has most definately been decreased due to the defeat of this amendment and it is only fair that I receive the full benefit of that in the form of a capital loss.

[Kwix]

Derek,
You wanna post that URL or were you just gonna keep it to yourself?

[Lucifer]

What? You mean I couldn't even get a simple majority for my handiwork? That does it, I'm stopping payment on the checks to K-Street! And no more freebees for Karl!

[Brian Courts]

Whyinhell would the Dems bother to filibuster this steaming turd of an amendment?

Exactly what I was wondering. Why didn't they just let it go to a vote so it could be voted down?

Somewhat off-topic, but at any rate I think the super-majority is a great idea for all legislation, not merely amendments. If there was on area the founders messed up (well besides the biggie of slavery but that's really another topic) it was not foreseeing the kind of garbage that would come out of Congress under a simple majority rule. The ideal president in my mind would be someone who vetoes everything congress tries to do and in essence forces a super-majority rule on them. If a bill isn't something that at least two-thirds of the House and Senate agree on, then government has no business forcing another law on us. Here in Oregon, I'd love to see the same standard applied to voter referenda and initiatives in general - two-thirds vote required to enact a law, but only one-third vote required to repeal any existing law. /offtopicrant

[jf]

Whyinhell would the Dems bother to filibuster this steaming turd of an amendment? Are they all dope-smoking goatfuckers?

Actually, Clean Hands, that was part of my point. Senator Byrd seemed to be the only one who voted to bring the amendment to a floor vote (or cloture vote, since I still don't grasp the procedures), even though he opposes the amendment. You would think the Dems would allow it to go to a vote so it could be shot down convincingly when it fell short of the 67 votes required. My guess is that, like abortion, nobody wants the issue truly settled, because then they would have to find new fringe issues to fire up the base.

[Phileleutherus Lipsiensis]

Personally, I don't want to know what is under thoreau. 🙂

[Derek Ashworth]

Kwix,

I tried that on the last post, so here it is in Cro-Magnon form:

http://www.reason.com/rauch/053106.shtml

(sorry, club fingers)

[Jon H]

"In Sacramento, the bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee was authored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. She's one of six, openly gay, California legislators and actively writes and supports new laws pushing the gay agenda. Some pass, some don't, but the efforts continue. She admits this legislation has been in the works since 1995."

Talk about undermining America, these cro-mags don't even know that Sheila Kuehl is the one and only Zelda from Dobie Gillis.

[Robert]

Here in Oregon, I'd love to see the same standard applied to voter referenda and initiatives in general - two-thirds vote required to enact a law, but only one-third vote required to repeal any existing law.

Trouble is, what counts as an enactment, and what counts as "a law"? Most legislation consists of cut-and-paste, search-and-replace, etc. in existing consolidated language, and the results of enactments then being consolidated.

If you apply your idea to any text string in consolidated statutes, then consider the consequences of making it easier to take out the word "not", for instance. Or of taking out qualifying language that reduces the scope of a passage.

If OTOH you apply your idea to previous acts of the legislature or of the voters, then consider the consequences of making it easier to "repeal a repealer" -- presumably with reversion to whatever was there just before the repeal.

Or you could apply our idea to units of the consolidated laws (sentences, paragaphs, sections, chapters, etc.), and then the easy-take-out provision is going to be rather unwieldy and not easy at all.