Breaking: Indiana Committee Passes Bill Allowing Voters To Ban Same-Sex Marriage
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After hearing over four hours of explanation and testimony, a Republican-led Indiana House committee has just advanced a bill that would place before voters the question of whether or not to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution. The one-sided ballot initiative would not allow voters to allow same-sex couples to marry, however. The full Indiana House is expected to vote on the legislation soon.
The House Elections and Apportionment Committee, by a vote of 9-3, voted to allow the full House to vote on the legislation. Committee Chairman Rep. Milo Smith, a Republican, rammed through and voted for the bill. He was asked to delay the vote and refused. The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Eric Turner, shown above explaining the legislation to the committee today.
The controversial bill is likely unconstitutional, as similar bans against same-sex marriage have been struck down by federal judges across the nation, most recently in Utah, and by state legislatures, as in Hawaii.
The anti-gay testimony exclusively from the professional, anti-gay evangelical-funded religious right, including attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Most of those who spoke in support of the legislation were not from Indiana. It was not disclosed if they were paid or compensated for their testimony or reimbursed for their expenses.
Others included Dr. Brent Jacobus, who claimed he owns a hospital. Jacobus (image, right,) also claimed that same-sex marriage would harm his business, and strongly suggested that heterosexuals live longer than homosexuals.
Rev. Ron Johnson was another anti-gay testifier. Last week, Johnson warned same-sex marriage would lead to “sexual anarchy.” Today he warned of “government thought police” and “sexual sin.” Johnson warned that same-sex marriage would take away the right of the faithful to discriminate against gay people.
Many who testified also falsely claimed that same-sex marriage deprives children of a mother and a father — which they claimed, through various statements from quasi-scientific studies or misleading and cherry-picked statements from pro-equality people, like Barack Obama, harms children.
“A man cannot be a mother, and a woman cannot be a father,” one said.
Rev. Andrew Hunt somehow tried to make the argument that same-sex marriage infringes on his rights as an African-American because of slavery, but also claiming that LGBT rights are not civil rights. “Which one of these things from the civil rights era is analjegous [sic] to the gay marriage movement?”
Many also claimed that if Indiana bans same-sex marriage in its constitution, “nothing will change,” and yet also claimed the very institution of marriage is at stake.
But the opponents of the discriminatory legislation far outweighed the proponents, and the committee was forced to extend the time for testimony to accommodate all those who showed up to today’s hearing.
Maria Rose of Cummins Engineering (NYSE:CMI), a $17.3 billion international corporation, delivered a passionate plea to vote down the legislation, stating that times have changed in the past decade — Indiana has been debating this amendment for that long.
“People come to Cummins because of our core values… Our board of directors is fully supportive” of same-sex marriage.
Rose said that Cummins has lost employees because of the anti-gay laws in Indiana.
Carol Trexler, diagnosed with lung cancer, discussed her unsanctioned marriage to another woman, and what their lives are like. “People understand what marriage means. They don’t understand what Donna and I are… Because we were not married Donna could not take medical leave to care for me.”
Here is Carol Trexler. Had chemo treatment today. “I want to make sure Donna’s with me at end” and treated right pic.twitter.com/R7mGu1PyRN
— Jon Murray (@indyJonMurray) January 22, 2014
Trexler came to today’s hearing after having chemo therapy this morning. “This issue is that important to me.” She talked about all the legal forms they’ve had to fill out to protect themselves, expensive forms that many same-sex couples cannot afford. “Every form I filled out was another reminder that we were treated differently.” “I want to be sure that Donna will be with me at the end and that she will have the same rights of a surviving spouse.” “We want to be have the same protections as our married neighbors, the protections that this amendment would prohibit under law.” “This issue is that important to me”
As our opponents discuss the “threat” to marriage in #IN, remember that it’s families like this who #HJR3 would harm: pic.twitter.com/mgWQi3uNy5
— Freedom Indiana (@freedom_indiana) January 22, 2014
Another woman who said she is straight and married, and opposed to banning same-sex marriage asked, “Who voted on my marriage rights?,” and added, “I’m a citizen of the United States and we are not a theocracy.”
Elizabeth Reese lamented to lawmakers, “we should be quoting the constitution instead of referencing the Bible.”
Henry Fernandez told the committee that he and his partner have been together for 19 years, and have been raising twins for 13 years. When they moved into the same neighborhood as Speaker Bosma lives, Fernandez said, “divorce rates did not go up, no neighbors moved, property values did not drop…we are not a threat to any family in our neighborhood.”
“A family’s love should not be subjected to a legislative vote or a statewide referendum,” Fernandez added.
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In a rare move, the White House is pushing back against James Carville, after the longtime political consultant and prolific pundit predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency would end within the next year.
“I’m saying this right now,” Carville declared on his Politicon podcast. “You’re not going to be president a year from now. You’re too soft a man. You’re too weak. Your support is draining out.”
“People are going to be on to you. And when the Democrats get back in office in January, they’re going right after the corruption,” Carville added.
“We’re going to find out all the money that has gone the wrong way, and we’re going to have a legal proceeding, and we’re going to have what you call a clawback,” he said.
The White House, in a statement to Fox News, slammed Carville.
READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?
“James Carville is a stone-cold loser who suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Carville had other strong words for the president.
“You’re so screwed,” he warned, before referring to a New York Times article.
“They’re leaking on you like crazy,” Carville said. “You can’t trust anybody. Your staff is leaking on you. The Pentagon is leaking on you. The State Department is leaking out here. Everybody is dumping all over you, loser. And, you know, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
He also warned the president about Vice President JD Vance’s loyalty, and later said, “you’re done, dude. You’re really done. No one fears you anymore. Your own staff doesn’t fear you.”
“But, dude, you and I know something,” Carville continued. “We got a little secret between me and you. You’re done. People hate you. Trust no one. Be as paranoid as you possibly be, because you can’t be paranoid enough.”
READ MORE: Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist
Image via Reuters
As his tenuous ceasefire approaches the 48-hour mark, President Donald Trump remains a “foolhardy and unpredictable executive-in-training” who got “schooled” by Iran, writes Trump biographer and Bloomberg columnist Timothy L. O’Brien.
In addition to costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, Trump’s Iran war has cost the lives of American soldiers, and thousands of Iranians. The economic tab may soon approach $100 billion, says O’Brien. But there have also been enormous “reputational, civic and strategic costs” for America.
“In the run-up to a two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday evening, the president took to social media and the airwaves to warn Iran and the world that ‘a whole civilization will die’ and he intended to bomb the country ‘back to the stone ages.’ He brushed off questions about whether he was willing to commit war crimes by noting that Iranians are ‘animals.'”
Trump’s “dangerous and reckless flexes” may have just been him “bluffing, but sophisticated dealmakers know that undeliverable threats backfire when your bluff is called” — and Iran “called Trump’s bluff.”
READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?
Now, writes O’Brien, Trump is, “essentially, a downed power line. If he is left to his own devices, sputtering, further conflagrations could consume the Middle East.”
O’Brien reminds that once elected, presidents “should come to the job with tangible aptitudes for management, leadership, policy, rationality and decency,” and not need the White House to be their “finishing school.”
But “largely uneducable,” Trump faces an Iran ceasefire that “is a recess of sorts for the world’s most powerful and incendiary pupil, and he may return to class having failed to absorb his studies.”
Trump is a “blinkered, close-minded leader,” charges O’Brien, and “a serial bankruptcy artist” who, before entering the White House, “was never an adept dealmaker.”
A “serious student” would try to learn from the ceasefire. But a cornered Trump may become “even more dangerous and thuggish.”
Ultimately, Trump “will be measured by whether he defines his Iranian studies by weeks of failed exams — or commits himself to years of mindless and cataclysmic classwork.”
READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant
Image via Reuters
Conservative commentator Bill Kristol suggests President Donald Trump has a “conquistador” complex — which is a complete reversal from how he campaigned in 2024, on “no new wars.”
“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace,” Trump declared during his 2024 campaign.
“These war hawks, they want to draft your kids to die in wars, and they will never fight themselves,” Trump said, days before the 2024 election.
The night he won, Trump told supporters, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Kristol writes at The Bulwark, “We haven’t heard much talk recently from the president about wars we’re not getting into.”
“Will one consequence of his humiliating failure in Iran be a return to such a stance? Perhaps the difficulties of the last two weeks have diminished Trump’s interest in foreign excursions?” he asks. “Appears not. A taste for foreign adventures seems to have lodged itself in Trump’s brain.”
READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant
He points to Trump just weeks ago saying, “Cuba is next by the way.”
Just yesterday, Trump returned his focus to Greenland.
“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Thursday night, Trump appeared to threaten Iran again, declaring that all “U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”
He concluded: “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”
Kristol notes that it is unusual for an American president to “proclaim ‘Conquest’ as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers ‘fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.'”
But for this president, “the dream of foreign conquest seems to have become a more central part of Trump’s personal sense of grandiosity, not to say megalomania, than it was earlier in his career.”
READ MORE: Trump Administration Wants Protected Health Records of Federal Workers
Image via Reuters
Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant
White House Responds to ‘Stone-Cold Loser’ Carville After Devastating Prediction
Bill Kristol Diagnoses Trump’s ‘Conquistador’ Complex
Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist
White House Responds to ‘Stone-Cold Loser’ Carville After Devastating Prediction
Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist
Bill Kristol Diagnoses Trump’s ‘Conquistador’ Complex
Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant
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