Colorado Congress Watch: Allard's Not-So-Gay Day

As we posted earlier, Senator Wayne Allard today introduced his proposed Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages.  Since the time we wrote on this topic off today's Rocky Mountain News story, things have turned a bit more sour for the Veterinarian-turned-Senator than this morning's press indicated the day would go.  While we told you the proposal was dead on arrival, we didn't expect it to happen this quickly and this publicly

This morning, Senator Allard expressed hopes that the gay marriage ban would be listed as the top legislative priority of the Republican controlled Senate.  Yet, when Republican leaders congregated to unveil their agenda of top ten priorities for the next two years, a gay marriage ban was not on the list.

And, as the words buried in the AP write-up on Senator Allard's legislation indicate, the White House is not just backing away, they are running away from it.   It's no mistake that Karl Rove's name appears in the AP story surrounded by paragraphs talking about the White House's reluctance to pursue this matter.  Read between the lines, kiddies, the mastermind political operative from Texas has already killed Senator Allard's proposal.

Finally, we have to ask, on a day when the gay marriage ban is getting a lot of attention, where's Marilyn?  A local AP version of the story only references her spokesman saying she'd re-introduce the legislation in the House.  It's a bit odd that on a high-profile day like this, last year's poster-child for banning gay marriages is hiding behind her spokesman. 

Comments

[Ben]

Describing the legislative efforts as attempts to "ban gay marriage" demonstrate either a confusion about the issue at hand or a rhetorical tool to skew the argument. The design of the Federal Marriage Amendment and similar state-level proposals (all of which have won handily) is to prevent government endorsement of the redefinition of the marriage institution to include anything but one man and one woman. If two homosexuals (or three bisexuals, or a brother & sister, or a free love clan) want to express their love and commitment to one another, nobody is stopping them. No one, except maybe on the fringes of American society, would propose imposing some kind of penalty on two homosexuals for trying to "marry." There is no "gay marriage ban" being proposed. Words have meaning.

[Alva Adams]

Senate Joint Resolution 26:

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission by the Congress:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any State, nor State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

"Only of the union of a man and a woman," is pretty unambiguous - any other form of marriage would not be allowed.

There's no rhetoric here. The bill says what it says.

You can keep calling the sky green if it makes you feel better, but when the rest of us look up, it's still going to be blue.

[Ed]

Alva - you're showing your true colors here and helping to make this blog the liberal blog for the state of colorado.

Interesting that in conflict with what you wrote here, Senate Majority Leader Frist named the Marriage Protection Amendment SJR1. The "1" symbolizes that it is a top priority. The list you refer to also includes Marriage as a priority. I think it is #6 on the list of 10, in no particular order.

"You can keep calling the sky green if it makes you feel better, but when the rest of us look up, it's still going to be blue."

For someone who claims to "have been involved in politics for such a long time", you continue to surprise me with your ignorance and bias.

[Alva Adams]

We're simply stating here that you can't write in and and tell us that the gay marriage amendment isn't about barring homosexuals from getting married when that's what it says, clear as day, in the text of the bill itself. You can't tell us that the sky is green when everyone can see that it is blue.

Believe what you want to believe, but the rest of us will pay attention to the facts in front of us. Most Republicans are backing away from this issue like it was the plague; the right-wing of the Party - people like Frist - will always support this ban, but more pragmatic Republicans who have to worry about re-election won't touch this issue. Even Marilyn Musgrave is staying away from it, after seeing the political damage it caused her.

You can accuse us of bias and ignorance until you are blue in the face if you'd like. We're just pointing out the facts - if you don't want to believe them, that's your deal.

[Ed]

Where is the evidence that Musgrave is backing away from this issue? This is simply not true. All public opinion polls on this issue show support anywhere from 60 to 80 percent nationwide.

[Alva Adams]

We're not talking about opinion polls - we're talking about the actions of Republicans in the last two days.

From Musgrave's spokesperson in today's Denver Post: "We're going to FOLLOW Senator Allard's LEAD on this." She doesn't want to be out in front on this issue anymore.

Again, we think healthy debate on this issue is great, as long as both sides don't pretend that the facts in the case don't exist. Read any newspaper from Monday or Tuesday to see how Republicans - including Karl Rove and George Bush - don't want to be out in front on this issue. Bush is not going to go to war on this issue - the White House has said it. It's true. I'm sorry, but it's true.

And really, surely you can make a more interesting argument than just screaming "ignorant biased liberal!" Is that really the best argument you can make? Let's have some intelligent debate here, instead of just parroting talk-radio.

[James Peabody]

If you want to throw around word like "ignorant," make sure your facts back you up.

First, the GOP list of top ten priorities includes, at number 6, legislation dealing with marriage. However, it is not the proposed Constitutional amendment which would define marriage as between a man and a woman. The legislation listed at #6 deals with tax provisions related to the marriage penalty, child care tax credits, adoption tax credits and other provisions from the 2001 tax package. It also has provisions dealing with welfare programs.

If you'd like to read what's in the legislation, go to this link: http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=1828&Month=1&Year=2005. And, the bills are listed in a specific order, with Senator Frist making a point that their #1 legislative priority is Social Security, which is why it got the S.1 number.

You're absolutely correct that Allard's bill got designated as Senate Joint Resolution 1, but it still didn't appear on the GOP leadership list and didn't seem to come up on their radar screen yesterday. In fact, if you read most of the reports on yesterday's announcement of Allard's bill and the GOP legislative agenda, you'll note that most reporters make a point of writing how the GOP leadership did not spend much time, if any, focused on Allard's proposed Constitutional Amendment.

As for Musgrave, we found it very interesting that she took such a vocal and public leadership role last year in this battle, but was not part of yesterday's festivities. In fact, in both the Rocky and the Denver Post story, Musgrave trots out her spokesman to say she will introduce the bill in the House. In the Post story, Musgrave's spokesman says: "She will soon follow Sen. Allard's lead by introducing the House version of the Marriage Protection Amendment." We're simply raising the question as to why she wasn't out front with Allard yesterday as it strikes us as mighty curious.

For these and a number of other reasons which are pretty clear, we're sticking to our analysis that the Marriage Protection Amendment is DOA in the Senate. You might not like that we made this call, and claim we're a bunch of liberal hacks for doing so. But the call was not made out of bias for or against this measure, it was made by looking at the reality of the political situation.

Considering we got called out as a bunch of James Dobson conservatives by another reader, seems like we've got people on all ends of the political spectrum calling the Colorado Pols hacks for the other side. We must be doing something right.

[Susan]

I find Musgrave's low profile interesting but not surprising. In one recent newletter sent to her constituents, she summarizes the accomplishments of her first term and doesn't even mention the FMA (perhaps that is only because it failed, however). More to the point, her supporters spent at least $5 million on her reelection bid and she still ended up with only 51% of the vote. She lost Larimer county even though Bush won there by a comfortable margin. I suspect that many of the libertarian-tending northern Colorado Repubs. were not happy with her almost exclusive focus on God and gays.

[Joe]

I'm not sure why anyone would refer to you as conservative James Dobson lovers. It is pretty obvious that this is a liberal blog. Keep up the liberal bias. People are noticing.

[George]

Okay, let's settle this once and for all: What's your take on Spongebob Squarepants? Careful, now...

[Alva Adams]

In terms of his performance as a cartoon character, or whether or not he is actually gay?

[George]

Okay, you've found me out... Even ol' Jimmy Dobson doesn't think Spongebob Squarepants is gay, as provided in his, "Setting the record straight," newsletter diatribe (get it, straight!) which, in about ten-thousand words, he explains that he wasn't actually acusing Spongebob of being gay, just that Spongebob was being manipulated by the homa-sex-yall, multiculturalistic evil empire which, as we all know, is out to recruit your kids ... blah, blah, blah. (No I won't provide the URL. That's beyond my call of duty.) What I'm really concerned about is Joe who, in his comment, noted that "People are noticing." Is this a John Ashcroft kind of thing? A 1984 kind of thing, like Big Brother or something? What people? God, shouldn't you just try to be a wee bit more to the right, so "people" won't be "noticing?"