Virginia Just Gets Worse
January 28, 2006: Although Virginia already has some of the country’s most hateful anti-gay laws on the books, they’re clearly not going to be satisfied until they take the World Cup for discrimination. This is from the Washington Post:
Va. Lawmakers Approve Ban on Gay Marriage
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia lawmakers gave final legislative approval Wednesday to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, despite warnings the measure is so broadly worded it could have dire unintended consequences for all unmarried couples.
The 28-11 Senate vote, combined with the House’s earlier passage, clears the way for the proposed amendment to be placed on the November ballot.
If voters approve it, Virginia will join 18 other states with constitutional amendments against gay marriage. Most of those amendments were adopted after Massachusetts’ highest court legalized gay marriage in 2003.
“I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness today to think we are deliberately doing something so intolerant, so discriminatory and so overreaching,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, a Democrat.
Gay marriage is already against the law in Virginia, but lawmakers said an amendment was needed as an extra insurance to stave off a court ruling like the one in Massachusetts.
As some of you may have heard on my show, my family is pondering a move to the Washington, DC metro area this summer. We would have loved to move to Virginia, but the state seems determined to attack and demean their LGBT citizens. What a sad situation.
January 28th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
I don’t know, maybe there is something wrong with me. I’ve known I was gay since about 1965, and the first thing I learned (no one taught me) was that it was “uncool” to be gay. I didn’t have a clue about the legal aspects of this issue other than the idea that doing ANYTHING to a gay man or woman would be ignored by those in authority. Gays, pretty much deserved what they got (or didn’t get). Then I started reading Penthouse and Playboy (mostly to try to fit in) but I found some of the info in articles dealing with sexual/civil rights to be eye-opening if not downright alarming. Many states, counties, cities and/or towns had laws against what someone in the 17th, 18th, or 19th century thought was “deviant” behavior….but in many cases, these laws were NOT enforced, EXCEPT against gays and lesbians. In some parts of the U.S. I would imagine this is still true. After living in California for a few years, I was transferred to Texas. I didn’t realize at first, that there might be legal differences between the laws regarding sexual “activities” from one state in the Union, to the next. In the mid-eighties, while I lived in a small town in Texas, the state SODOMY laws changed SEVERAL times. Luckily, I never encountered any law enforcement that was ANTI-gay, but I was never in a position to be caught doing anything illegal. To wrap this all up, I don’t know where this “urge” for gay men and lesbians to marry came from, but it seems that it MIGHT have been better to secure freedom from discrimination some other way. This flies right in the face of the Christian Right, and with their strong hold all over this country, is it any surprize they are trying to “roolback” what miniscule rights gays and lesbians already have?