The equality bandwagon rolls into Maine

The Maine Legislature Senate has just approved a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state.The bill faces a couple more votes, but versions of it have already passed both chambers of the legislature. the Maine House. No word, yet, on whether the governor will sign it to make Maine the fifth state to make marriage equal.

Wow.

Double wow, actually.

Quote of the Day: Shoving it "down our throats"

By Diane Silver

The Kansas House debate over banning domestic partner registries prompted what may be the best quote I've seen in a while.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the sponsor of ban, Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, "said if couples are denied health insurance because they are unmarried, then they should get married."

That brought a sharp response from state Rep. Thomas “Tim” Owens, R-Overland Park, who said, “We are a nation of freedom, and I get real tired of hearing people try to shove down our throats how they believe that everybody else should act.”

Oh yeah.

PHOTO: Rep. Tim Owens

What did the Kansas House just do to domestic partner registries?

By Diane Silver

[updated]

Here's the quick version: The Kansas House just voted 66 to 50 to refer the proposed statewide ban on domestic partner registries -- House Bill 2299 -- to the House Judiciary Committee for more study. This means the ban is still alive, but not moving forward. The ban itself did NOT come up for a vote by the full House.

The vote on referring the bill to committee was a recorded roll call vote. Once the House Journal for today is posted, we can see how everyone voted.

Much parliamentary maneuvering ensued before House voted to refer the bill back to committee.

An amendment was offered, and House members debated whether the amendment was "germane." In other words, the question was whether the amendment dealt with the same issue as the original bill. Under legislative rules only germane issues can be considered. The legislative expert on rules, the chair of the rules committee, declared that the amendment was not germane, and an unrecorded vote upheld his ruling.

Rep. Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, then provided background on Lawrence's domestic partner registry. He eventually moved that the bill be referred to the House Judiciary Committee, and won that vote.

Bottom line is that Davis succeeded in taking the bill back to the beginning of the legislative process. HB 2299 now has to go through these steps to become law.

1. Be approved by a vote of the Judiciary Committee
2. Be approved by a vote of the full House
3. Be considered by a Senate Committee
4. Be approved by a Senate Committee
5. Be approved by the full Senate
6. Be signed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius

And so the saga continues. Stay tuned.

Happening Now: Listen live to the Kansas House debating a ban on domestic partner registries

By Diane Silver

The Kansas House is currently debating House Bill 2299, which bans domestic partner registries throughout the state. You can listen live via the Internet.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Lance Kinzer, has just verified that the bill is RETROACTIVE. That means it would render null and void Lawrence's domestic partner registry.

At 12:14 p.m., the House was waiting to hear a ruling from the Rules Committee chair on whether an amendment to the bill could be made. Right now all you will hear is background noise.

Stay tuned.

The right has lost Kansas & the loonies are disappearing! Not yet, but soon?

By Diane Silver

Imagine my surprise when I woke up to this pronouncement on Alternet about Kansas, my current place of abode:

"The progressive backlash in my old home state is complete. The right wing not only has lost control of Kansas, they've been virtually thrown out of the state..."

Oh gosh, I wish this were true. I really, really, really do, but this declaration by former Kansan Martha Burk is a tad premature.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that Burk's vision may well come true. It may even happen within the next few years. It just hasn't happened yet.

To claim that it has is to naively misrepresent the situation. Ignoring reality is a lousy way to win elections.

First as a newspaper reporter and now as a political activist and blogger, I've been watching politics in the Sunflower State for more than 20 years. Here's how I read the tea leaves.

In the Alternet piece -- which first appeared in Ms. -- Burk takes note of all the Kansas political news that's been zipping around the media since November.

Yup, our governor is Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, and she is really popular. Her lieutenant governor running mate is the former chairman of the state GOP, and he did switch parties to run with her. Right winger Phill Kline got soundly booted out as Attorney General and another moderate former Republican, Paul Morrison, won easily. Democrat Nancy Boyda scored an upset victory over longtime Congressional incumbent Jim Ryun. A couple of moderate Republicans switched parties in the Legislature and won seats.

Perhaps most important, Operation Rescue's "Wichita '07 -- A Cry For Justice" event was an utter bust. Instead of the thousands who were supposed to march on the Wichita clinic of Dr. George Tiller, only a handful of people came.

But Burk left a lot out of her story, and the missing facts are telling.

The biggest sign that the religious right still has a firm hold in Kansas is the makeup of the Legislature. The Kansas House is still ultra-conservative. In January, House members elected social conservative Melvin Neufeld as speaker.

In the state Senate, a woeful 10, yes I said "ten," of the 40 senators are Democrats. In the House, only 47 of 125 representatives are Democrats. Not all of the Democrats are progressive, or even moderate.

Liberal legislation barely gets a hearing in the Statehouse, while almost anything that limits state services or helps the religious right goes to the front of the line.

It's true that the darling of the religious right, former AG Kline, was soundly defeated in November, but a month later he landed on his feet. The Republican Committee of Johnson County -- the state's most prosperous county -- elected Kline to fill the last two years of the recently vacated district attorney's office.

This resurrected Kline's political career, which up to that moment seemed dead on arrival. Given that Kline may well have national ambitions, it's important to watch what he does.

Kansas' future is important because it has often served as an early warning system for the rest of the nation.

How will we know if the religious right is finally on its way out in this reddest of red states? Look for these signs.

1. Watch the primary battle between ultra-conservative Jim Ryun and moderate Lynn Jenkins. The two are fighting for the Republican nod to run against Boyda.

The primary is 14 months away and the 2008 general election still 17 months off, but Ryun and Jenkins are already going after each other with a vengeance. The most recent ignition point is a Club For Growth ad attacking Jenkins. The tussle has already made the local newspaper and the left-wing blogosphere.

What to Watch
If Ryun wins in 2008, then forget about claiming that the religious right has lost power in Kansas. If Jenkins or Boyda win in '08, then there very well may be hope.

2. Keep an eye on the struggle over the Johnson County District Attorney's office.

Kline already has one Republican and one Democratic challenger. To make matters more interesting, the county Republican Party may already be taking sides -- against Kline.

What to Watch
If Kline runs and wins all the fury his insider election created, then moderates and liberals will have proven themselves to be toothless against the right.

3. Scope out the religious right's effort to retake the state Board of Education in '08.

Moderates won control of the state board in November, but enough seats are up for grabs in the next election that the majority could flip once again.

What to Watch
If all the furor over the right's anti-evolution stand doesn't elect a moderate majority, then the religious right may have years of renewed health.

4. Keep sight of the legislative districts and the leadership races.

This is the down and dirty local level of politics in Kansas. The candidates go neighbor to neighbor, particularly in House districts.

What to Watch
If moderates and liberals can't take control of legislative districts, particularly in the House, then the age of a more moderate Kansas may be another decade or so in coming. The winners need not be Democrats to bring a bit of sanity to the Statehouse. However, they do have to turn away from what folks out here politely call the "social conservative" wing of the GOP. If that happens, and a moderate House Speaker is elected, then folks, we really will have a new ballgame.

Kansas Legislature gets ready to adjourn with mixed results for lesbians & gays

By Diane Silver

[updated 3:21 p.m.]
The Legislature has adjourned.
------------------------------------------

The Kansas House and Senate are expected to finalize the budget this afternoon and then pack it in for the year. Except in the unlikely event of a special session, the part-time Legislature won't be back to take another vote until January 2008.

That's both good news and bad news for Kansas' lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered citizens. This year was a mixed bag when it came to fair laws.

We won a victory in gaining passage of a bill requiring school districts to institute an anti-bullying law.

“School should be safe for all students,” Thomas Witt, chair of the Kansas Equality Coalition, said in a statement when the bill passed.** “Too often bullying makes school a nightmare for lesbian and gay students. That’s why this bill is so important to us. This is a good first step toward ending the harassment faced today by far too many kids – both straight and gay.”

We were also able to keep a proposed ban on domestic partner registries from moving forward. The ban passed out of a House committee, but never won the support it needed for a vote by the full House, which is the more conservative of the Legislature's two chambers.

However, we failed once again to get a bill providing anti-discrimination protection out of a Senate committee. We got a hearing on the measure, which would have added sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination statutes. We just couldn't get the votes to move the bill to the Senate floor.

That's frustrating, but it's not surprising. Any civil rights law tends to take time.

I do have to admit that I want to scream periodically. I'm not certain what's so frightening or wrong, for that matter, about a law that says, for example, that people, whether they are straight or gay, can't be kept from making a living because of their sexual orientation. Why should I be denied a job because of who I am?

And so it goes...

The solution to these problems, of course, is to realize that passing legislation takes time, it takes lobbying and the political strength to put supportive lawmakers into office. That's why the Kansas Equality Coalition exists.
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** In the interest of transparency, I work with the Equality Coalition, and I wrote that press release about the anti-bully bill.

Kansas lawmakers find a tiny bit of sanity in university repair plan

By Diane Silver

The good news is that the Legislature has finally decided to fund desperately needed repairs for the state's crumbling campuses. The even better news is that lawmakers have finally realized that Kansas' state universities are actually part of the state.

I'd call that a good first step for a state that has been abandoning its universities at an alarming rate.

Depending on who's talking, the package provides about $380 million or about $326 million (if I did the math right) over the next five years to the six universities, multiple community colleges and technical schools. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is expected to sign the bill.

A combination of grants, state-subsidized loans and donor incentives, the package doesn't come close to the $663 million the Board of Regents says it needs.

However, the plan does not include an earlier Republican proposal for folks in university towns to raise local taxes to pay for the repairs. First floated by Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, that plan scared the heck out of me.

I'll admit that as a resident of the home of the University of Kansas, I would have paid higher taxes under the plan. That isn't the most frightening thing, though. I'd actually be glad to pay higher taxes to fix our universities if the taxes applied equally across the state.

What really spooked me was the idea that one of most powerful people in state government didn't understand that universities serve the entire state. Such foolishness shows an ignorance that is, well, mind boggling.

All I can say today is congratulations to Neufeld and the rest of the Legislature for figuring out that our state universities are actually assets to Kansas and not burdens.

More on the repair funding can be found in the Topeka Capital-Journal and Wichita Eagle.

The Kansas Legislature's priorities go wonky

By Diane Silver

What's more important: Spiffing up their own building or providing Kansas youth with the facilities they need to learn to be our future leaders? Such hard decisions these lawmakers have, but then again, who needs universities!

The Wichita Eagle's Richard Crowson has the right idea.

What happens to Kansas when the state bails out on its own universities?

By Diane Silver

The lines tell the story. The green line represents state support of Kansas universities. The red lines represents the increase in tuition. Notice a trend? (Thanks to the Lawrence Journal-World for posting this chart.)

Or, put this another way: If the Kansas Legislature keeps ignoring its universities, what do you think will happen? Where will our smartest children go to get the preparation they need to survive in an age of globalization and outsourcing? And when they graduate, where will they go to live?

Who will reap the benefit of cutting edge research if Kansas universities don't have the facilities to that kind of work? How will our economy develop, and how will we grow new jobs if the state's universities fall into disarray? Where will our doctors and other professionals come from?

And most importantly: Just how stupid are the 165 members of the Kansas Legislature? Do they really believe this state can prosper economically if it fails to fund its universities?

Apparently lawmakers are pretty durn dumb because that is exactly what those folks in the Statehouse are doing.

And their latest idea... the idea that universities should be funded like community colleges and that university towns should pay for needed maintenance is self defeating to say the least.

Here's an idea, let's call it the University Town Fairness Act. You want to dump support for each of the six state universities onto the local population? Go ahead. Just make certain that students from outside those towns pay higher tuition than the kids who live in Lawrence, Manhattan, Emporia, Fort Hays and Pittsburg.

Check of the Journal-World article "Six Universities in Search of a State." That says it all.