Colorado's House speaker single-armedly strong-arms the defeat of a civil-unions bill

Colorado House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino, a Democrat, vents frustration at (Republican) Speaker Frank McNulty's strong-arming of the doom of a civil-unions bill last night.

by Ken

I don't think anyone is terribly surprised by the virtuosic performance turned in last night by Colorado Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty.

I don't know if everyone has been following the legislative circus that has unfolded in the Colorado state legislature, but last night -- in a special session called by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper -- Speaker McNulty demonstrated that when he wants a bill killed, it doesn't matter that the State Senate has passed it or that in the regular session all 72 committees in the Republican-contolled House, which has a one-vote Republican majority, that had a crack at it also passed it, or that state voters favor it. If the speaker wants it killed badly enough, it's D-E-A-D dead, no matter what he has to do to kill it.

To briefly bring you up to speed in case you haven't been following it: Last Tuesday night, the end of the House's regular session, Speaker McNulty found himself in a situation he didn't expect. A bill allowing same-sex civil unions in the state, which had been passed by the Senate, had somehow gotten through all the House committees lined up, with what he no doubt regarded as traitorous Republican votes on each committee. It was important to the speaker that the bill die in committee, because it was pretty clear that there were enough votes in the House to pass the bill if it ever came to a floor vote.

Which the speaker made sure never happened, even though the stalling tactics he employed that night also shut down final consideration of some 30 other bills, including a number of considerable importance to Coloradans. There were a lot of supporters of the civil-unions bill who weren't enthusiastic about the idea of the governor calling a special legislative session, since the regular session's committee approvals died with the regular session, and they knew that Speaker McNulty would have full control over which committee to send it this time. What's more, as several colleagues have pointed out, s special session gave the speaker a chance to wiggle off the hook for all those bills he had singlehandedly blown up in his zeal to obstruct the civil-unions bill, but gave him a chance to present himself as a legislative whirlwind instead of the homophobic obstructionist he actually is.

The L.A. TImes's Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported:

supporters knew the legislation was doomed as soon as Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty, who opposed civil unions and the special session, assigned the bill to the conservative State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee early Monday. Republicans hold a one-vote majority in the House, 33-32.

Supporters spent an hour testifying before the panel late Monday in a room packed with opponents wearing white T-shirts that read, "Loving all, protecting marriage." Same-sex couples talked about why the legislation mattered to them, how it would grant them rights similar to married couples, including letting them make medical decisions for each other and their children.

Then opponents, including a lawyer for the conservative Scottsdale, Ariz., based Alliance Defense Fund and a representative of the Archdiocese of Denver, talked about how the legislation would reverse the will of the people expressed in a 2006 state constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. They said they see a slippery slope between legalizing civil unions and gay marriage.

In the end, the Republican-dominated committee sided with the legislation's opponents.

Even Republican Rep. Don Coram, who has a gay son, told the Denver Post that he couldn't vote for the bill, citing the 2006 marriage amendment.

Brad Clark, executive director of Denver-based One Colorado, a statewide gay and lesbian advocacy group, told The Times: “We’re incredibly disappointed that the House leadership killed this bill. We believe the Democratic process was abused.

“The governor did his part. There was more than enough votes to pass this bill,” Clark said. “The speaker of the House sent this to a 'kill committee' because he wanted to circumvent the process.”

House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino, who sponsored the civil unions legislation as the state's first openly gay legislator, tweeted his frustration late Monday.

"A sad day #civilunions killed on a party line vote in @RepMcNulty kill committee," he wrote. "The process was thwarted Tuesday and again today."

The talk I'm hearing is that the speaker's conduct of this session may be the nail in the coffin for that one-vote Republican House majority, and that the increasingly likely new Democratic majority will pass the bill in the next session.


MEANWHILE IN VIRGINIA: AN OPENLY GAY JUDICIAL
NOMINEE IS GAY-BASHED BY A KOOK LEGISLATOR

To a lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender folks, the marriage-equality issue runs a distant second to desperately needed legal protections against discrimination in such basic rights areas as employement and housing, a situation that ENDA (the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a dead issue for the present thanks to the Republican-controlled U.S. House) is designed to address. Despite the claim of stupefyingly ignorant public jackasses that LGBT discrimination is a non-issue, the fact is that in most of the country, LGBT people can be and routinely are denied jobs and housing -- and thrown out of same upon discovery -- because of their sexual orientation.

It turns out that this applies even to would-be judges. This morning HuffPost's Mollie Reilly updated her earlier report on fun and games in the state's House of Delegates:

The GOP-controlled House defeated the nomination of Tracy Thorne-Begland, Richmond's chief deputy commonwealth's attorney, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. He would have been the first openly gay judge elected in Virginia.

The rejection of Thorne-Begland was spearheaded by Del. Bob Marshall. As Reilly had reported earlier:

Marshall said he believes that Tracy Thorne-Begland, a Richmond-based prosecutor who lives with his partner and two adopted children, should be removed from the list of potential appointees. Thorne-Begland's sexual orientation would conflict with his ability to hold up the state's constitution, Marshall said.

"Marriage is between one man and one woman, and the the applicant has represented himself in public in a relationship that we don't recognize in Virginia," Marshall said in an interview with WRIC, the ABC affiliate in Richmond.

The GOP lawmaker said that Thorne-Begland is "an aggressive activist for the pro-homosexual agenda."

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