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Indiana Legislature Proposes Three Anti-Homosexual Bills

I was aware of only one of these bills, but Scott, a fellow Hoosier, alerted me to them.

The fact that I’m living in a conservative state isn’t news, and I knew that a marriage-protection amendment was bound to be coming. But I’m a little bit surprised that not one, but three anti-gay amendments have been introduced by my state legislators.

Yes, there’s the protection of marriage amendment, but there’s also a proposed amendment prohibiting a homosexual from being a foster parent or adopting; and an amendment to eliminate domestic partner benefits for all state university employees.

While I’ve always been less than thrilled about being an Indiana resident, I’ve also always contended that a good job and nice home were enough to keep me here and reasonably happy. But today, I wish this fucking state and 3/4 of its residents would sink into a swamp.

And on the national front, the New York Times is reporting that “a coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush’s plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

Today, I’m with Scott; I wouldn’t mind if the whole damn state sank into a bog. Of all the state’s worries, of all the ways political time and taxpayer money could be spent.

I’m so angry there aren’t any words.

These proposals come shortly after the booting of the state’s Democratic governor in favor of Mitch Daniels. Yes, the Mitch Daniels who used to be the White House budget director who wants to clean up Indiana’s deficit by cutting funding to our public schools. The first one in the White House who resigned under accusations of insider trading. Yeah, him. I’m hoping those who are bringing these bills, primarily Brian Bosma, the house bigot, do not have a friend in Daniels.

But it doesn’t look hopeful.


13 thoughts on Indiana Legislature Proposes Three Anti-Homosexual Bills

  1. Forgive my copy-and-paste job from a post I wrote a couple days ago regarding the Indiana Court of Appeals upholding a we-don’t-recognize-marriage-unless-we-feel-like-it law, but it’s pertinent:

    For people who really care about the sanctitiy of marriage, it would be worth noting that the law this suit was challenging inaugurated the first time in history in which the State of Indiana was allowed the ability to not honor another state’s marriage contract. You cannot create laws that allow marriages to not be recognized and pretend that you are not damaging the sacrosanct nature of it.

    At least not by my values.

    The state should do all it can to nurture these relationships for those people it deems mature enough to enter them — basically like any other “contract”. Indeed, the Court’s decision even alludes to the state having a vested interest in these relationships. Notably, the decision cites procreation as the reason Indiana supports marriage.

    Fuck your God.

    Fuck your Love.

    So long as you fuck each other. Amen.

    No, those aren’t my values, and I don’t think they’re the values of sterile people, or, for that matter of the man at the pharmacy who has to buy Viagra to get it up becuase his boyfriend or his slag of a wife doesn’t do it for him anymore. Based on this decision, we really could extrapolate sterility or erectile dysfunction as reasonable bases for dissolution of marriage. That’s really not in anyone’s best interest, is it?

  2. I’m a bisexual living in Indiana. This state is a pit. Thanks for posting this. I knew it was bad, I just didn’t know how bad.

  3. As a Texan, I wish I could look down my nose at Indiana (or any other state), but then there’s always proposed House Joint Resolution 19

    BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    SECTION 1. Article XVI, Texas Constitution, is amended by adding Section 73 to read as follows:
    Sec. 73. Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. Legal status for unmarried persons which is identical or substantially similar to marital status shall not be valid or recognized.

    We haven’t yet extended our bigotry to adoption of children by same-sex couples, but I’m sure the GOP leadership in the Legislature will manage to squeeze it in between the school financing system disaster, cutting children from the CHIP program, and underfunding mental health and CPS.

  4. I HATE my state (I live in Indiana)! Goddamn it! It would be my home fucking state to do something like this! I’m really sorry everybody! I’m really, REALLY sorry! We’re NOT all like that! I do NOT worship the “god” of my fellow Hoosiers! NEITHER do I share their bigoted, homophobic values! Fuck their god and fuck their “moral values”! Forgive me! I know I’m guilty by association. I’m SO *SORRY* GLBT Community!

    Sanctity my ass! If there was ‘sanctity’, then there wouldn’t be so much divorce among hetero folks. There’s nothing sacred about marriage (to me anyway, I’m sure others would disagree and that’s fine). It’s just a social and domestic contract between two people, nothing more (at least to me anyways, others probably disagree). Why don’t those ultra-Christians worry about the decay and deterioration of so called ‘sanctity’ within hetero marriages?!!!!

    And children need and deserve loving homes and Gays and Lesbians are more than willing to adopt and take in these poor kids who need love.

    My state is filled with a bunch of bigoted fucks! My sincerest apologies Hoosier GLBT Community. At least this hetero Hoosier here is on your side of the struggle 😉

    Never give up! Keep fighting for your civil rights!

  5. This is precisely the kind of thing that sparks a culture war. I refuse to believe that the forces for good will lose here. I think a culture war is needed in this country to shake the apathy. Homophobes cannot win against dedicated people who have truth on their side.

  6. I, too, live in Texas, where no gay or lesbian is safe. *shakes head* It’s perfectly acceptable to use the word “faggot” in polite conversation here. Sometimes I feel like I having a really, really bad dream.

  7. All you folks who live in Indiana should come next door—Illinois just passed a law banning discrimination based on sexuality, we’ll hopefully have a Green candidate for governor for the 2006 election, and we have two of the best Senators in the country. 😉

  8. wow, i wish that i had words that could eloquently express how i feel about denying gay people the right to adopt, or not acknowledging marriages of other states, or denying rights to domestic partners. but, i don’t instead i have a slew of negative nasty things to say to the people who uphold and believe in this small minded bullshit, that i will (i’m sure thankfully) keep to myself.
    I got in a discussion about the right of gay people to adopt this weekend with a friend of mine and got to hear some of the p.o.v.’s of the more religious folks out there. let me just say this, your idea of society and what is right or wrong is something that is taught to you. A marriage or parents being only one man or one woman, is a social construct and nothing more.

    i hate this society.
    i wonder if canada will be far enough and if i will make it here until i am done with school. a little test in pateince and tolerence indiana sure is.

  9. Pardon me while I make incoherent noises of rage and my eye twitches uncontrollably — I’d read this on Scott’s site yesterday, and am reading it again here today, and both times have left me seething with rage and as an NH resident, unable to do a damn thing about it. So it’s impotent rage — even less fun. About the only thing I can do is donate to the HRC, but even that’s no guarantee of anything.

    Sometimes, I really hate not being an all-powerful superbeing.

  10. Fucking Indiana…and here I was, not too long ago, thinking it was pretty cool that Indiana universities actually offered same-sex partner benefits. Especially in contrast to the community meeting of many years ago when the First Church of God wackos were furious about the proposed human rights ordinance…at least the ordinance passed. Hopefully people will be loud enough to prevent these propositions from coming to fruition. Write your representatives…be as loud as possible about this thing. While happy I now live in a progressive state (although Washington does define marriage as excluding gays, so not progressive enough), I wish I could help in Indiana.

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