Anti-Gay Hatred To Get Second Chance In Arizona

When misguided and thoughtless Wisconsin voters were placing discrimination into the state constitution in November 2006 with the passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment, the smarter folks in Arizona were rejecting the same type of amendment.  The fact that one state could prove to the rest of the country that anti-gay politics need not win was praised by many.  But hate and bigotry promoters such as Rep. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler are forcing the issue to come back to the voters of Arizona, perhaps as soon as this fall.

The state House voted 33-25 this afternoon to ask voters to constitutionally bar gays from being wed.

Backers of SCR 1042 acknowledged state law already limits marriage in Arizona to one man and one woman. That law has been upheld by the state Court of Appeals, a decision the state Supreme Court refused to disturb.

But Rep. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, said only by putting the provision into the state constitution can foes of same-sex weddings ensure that a future court — or a future Legislature — cannot decide otherwise.

What precisely is Yarbrough afraid of?  Is he so insecure with his own marriage that he fears other loving couples might send his slipping of the cliff?

As my readers might suspect the passage was along party lines.

Opponents argued that the existing law makes the amendment unnecessary and that it insults gays and represents an attempt to exploit marriage for political purposes.

“This is a political ploy to be used in November and I believe it is inappropriate to use marriage as a political ploy,” said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix.

The Republican-led House’s vote was mostly along party lines.

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Technorati Tags: GayRights, Arizona, SteveYarbrough, GayMarriage, CivilUnions,

Racist Ron Paul Working For A Heated Republican Convention?

This article caught my attention.    This proves that all the political intrigue is not only with the Democrats as we prepare for our national convention.  At least Democrats do not have Ron Paul, the racist and bigoted writer on our side.

But in the meantime, quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated in late March in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

Never mind Ralph Nader, Republican and Democratic parties both face potentially damaging internal splits that could cripple their chances for victory in a narrow vote on Nov. 4.

Just take a look at recent Republican primary results, largely overlooked because McCain locked up the necessary 1,191 delegates long ago. In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who’ve each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%.

On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%.

Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP’s presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%).

As Politico.com’s Jonathan Martin noted recently, at least some of these results are temporary protest votes in meaningless primaries built on lingering affection for Huckabee and suspicion of McCain.

Given the long-since settled GOP race, thousands of other Republicans in these states, who might have put up with a McCain vote, crossed over to vote in the more exciting Democratic primaries, on their own for Sen. Barack Obama or at the urging of talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who sought to support Hillary Clinton and prolong Democratic bloodletting.

According to a recent Boston Globe tally, Paul has a grand total of 19 Republican delegates to Romney’s 260, Huckabee’s 286 and McCain’s 1,413.

In the last three months, Paul’s forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.

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They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who’s running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party.

Technorati Tags: RonPaul, Republicans, Election08, JohnMcCain, RepublicanNationalConvention, GOP

Missouri Hopes To Make It Harder For Poor, Disabled, Elderly, Minorities To Vote

The idea that we should work to find ways to make it more difficult to cast a ballot seems like a past-time for the Missouri State Legislature.  The Missouri voter ID requirement, which the Supreme Court ruled to be constitutional, and which many of us understand to be better labeled as disenfranchisement, seems to be but the start of their efforts to stymie voting.  Now they want proof of citizenship. (Why don’t Missouri Republicans just vote for the entire state and be done with it?  Why even pretend that they care about the will of the voters and want them to even show up on Election Day? ) This new proof of citizenship idea smacks me of being so un-American.  I think perhaps the Missouri Legislature should instead show proof that enough oxygen is getting to the brains of their members.

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.

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“Three forces are converging on the issue: security, immigration and election verification,” said Dr. Robert A. Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington. This convergence, he said, partly explains why such measures are likely to become more popular and why they will make election administration, which is already a highly partisan issue, even more heated and litigious.

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

In most of the states that require identification, voters can use utility bills, paychecks, driver’s licenses or student or military ID cards to prove their identity. In the Democratic primary election last week in Indiana, several nuns were denied ballots because they lacked the required photo IDs.

Measures requiring proof of citizenship raise the bar higher because they offer fewer options for documentation. In most cases, aspiring voters would have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport. Many residents of Arizona and Missouri already have citizenship information associated with their driver’s licenses, and within a few years all states will be required by the federal government to restrict licenses to legal residents.

Critics say that when this level of documentation is applied to voting, it becomes more difficult for the poor, disabled, elderly and minorities to participate in the political process.

Technorati Tags: MIssouri, Voting, NewYorkTimes, VoterID