Okay, maybe that’s a bit premature, but just a few hours ago, the Minnesota House of Representatives voted 75-59 to pass a bill legalizing gay marriage. If it gets through the Senate and is signed by Governor Dayton, we’d be the 12th state in the U.S. to do so. (Kinda weird to think that in November, we were voting about a provision to the state constitution defining marriage as “man and woman.”) I’ve said before that I don’t like talking about politics here, but I did a little research and found a few things that may or may not be enlightening:
1) The voting was almost split down party lines, Democrats for and Republicans against. Almost. As it turned out, two Democrats and four Republicans crossed the proverbial carpet. Dems had the House majority, so the legislation was already likely to pass, but the fact that the vote wasn’t decided exclusively according to party lines is at least mildly refreshing.
2) They passed an amendment to add “civil” to “marriage” in the bill, which I think is a great decision. If a particular church or organization chooses not to marry a couple, they can’t be punished for refusing to do so. Some people may complain that “civil” is irrelevant because marriage is a religious institution, but while I understand their point, there’s a problem they likely don’t know, haven’t considered or blatantly ignore.
3) There are 1,138 federal laws and 515 state laws in Minnesota granting specific rights to married couples that are unavailable to gay couples. 1,653 laws. Think about how big that number is. If you assigned each law to a day on a calendar, that calendar would be four years and four months long and none of them can apply to gay couples in Minnesota because they can’t get married.
So that’s the scoop of the hour. House Representatives made their votes for various reasons, not all of which were their political affiliation. They chose to legalize civil gay marriage, so regardless of your beliefs about them being loved or damned in the eyes of God, this decision was more about granting gay couples the same rights in the eyes of the law. Welcome to being Number 12, kids.
