Hawaii Republicans Try To Block Marriage Equality From Advancing
Thousands of people have signed up to testify for and against marriage equality in hearings that will resume Friday in the Hawaii House. In the meantime, however, some House Republicans are trying to find ways to obstruct or compromise the bill to prevent it from passing.
Some lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Aaron Johanson (R), have proposed a broad religious exemption that would provide small businesses (those with five or fewer employees) a license to discrimination against same-sex couples. Such a provision would spare a photographer, baker, florist, or wedding planner from having to provide services to same-sex couples — unless they’re the only business in a rural area that can provide it. Even if such an amendment is considered in the House, it is not likely to survive consideration by the Senate, which passed the marriage equality bill 20-4 earlier this week.
One opponent of the bill is taking a different approach: he’s suing the state, arguing that the legislature is constitutionally prohibited from passing marriage equality. According to Rep. Bob McDermott (R), when the people of Hawaii voted in 1998 to amend the state constitution so that “the legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples,” they were actually voting to ban same-sex marriage. If the people perceived that’s what they were doing, McDermott argues, then that’s the force of the law.
Because he wants the people to decide, McDermott has also proposed a constitutional amendment removing the 1998 language and explicitly limiting marriage to the unions of one man and one woman. In an ironic twist, this seems to betray the very claim made by his lawsuit. If a new amendment is necessary to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage, then that suggests the legislature still has the power to legalize it.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/11/01/2873881/hawaii-republicans-try-block-marriage-equality-advancing/
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