var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};
As everyone knows, in any legislative body, membership on certain committees carries both prestige and other benefits — often including financial, or post-legislative access. Membership to any judiciary committee is no exception.
Indiana‘s Republican Speaker of the House is now on a religious crusade to ensure — at any and all costs — that a bill to ban same-sex marriage passes in committee. This week, after hours of testimony from in-state and out-of-state parties on HJR3, legislation that would allow allow voters to decide if they want a ban on same-sex marriage written into their constitution, the committee decided to not actually complete a scheduled vote on the measure.
Now, it appears the delay was due to not having enough “yeas” to pass the bill to the full House for a vote. In other words, the bill — which, given all the recent federal rulings, in Utah, Oklahoma, and other states, is clearly unconstitutional — is about to die, and the Speaker has effectively demanded super-natural life-sustaining measures be taken.
House Speaker Brian Bosma is now threatening Judiciary Committee members that he will kick them off the prestigious and influential committee if they will not vote for the bill.
“The speaker, of course, has the power to move bills and has complete autonomy over committee membership,” Bosma says, according to NWI Politics. “Our rules clearly provide for” removal of an elected representative from the judiciary committee. “Members serve at the pleasure of the speaker.”
“I’ve said one person shouldn’t make the decision; we’ve got to figure out if a couple people ought to make the decision for all Hoosiers,” Bosma, who is up for re-election this year, added.
Of course, by re-arranging members of the Judiciary Committee to get his desired result, Bosma is doing just that: allowing — actually, ensuring –one person to make the decision.
“The rules of the Republican-controlled Indiana House authorize the speaker to change a committee’s membership at any time, though Bosma said he’s never done it before to advance legislation, and he only could recall seeing it done once during his 28 years in the House,” NWI Politics reports:
At least three of the nine Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are believed to be considering voting with the four committee Democrats against the marriage amendment, which would kill it.
…
The earliest the committee can meet again is Wednesday. The deadline for House committee action is Jan. 28.
HJR3 would not only ban same-sex marriage in the Indiana constitution, it would take draconian and extraordinarily hostile measures against all unmarried couples — same-sex or opposite sex. The legislation prohibits lawmakers in the future from ever offering domestic partnerships of civil unions, making opposite-sex marriage the only legally-recognized institution in the Hoosier state.
Â
Image via Speaker Bosma’s Facebook page