UPDATE: Indiana Legislature Passes Marriage Amendment!

Last Monday the Indiana Senate took up the issue of protecting our marriage statutes with a constitutional amendment. Last November you may recall voting on a constitutional amendment to protect a property tax cap law successfully pushed through the legislature by Governor Daniels. This is the same type of proposal. HJR 6 will protect our marriage laws for future generations of children who deserve the best shot at having both a mom and a dad.

When HJR 6 came up for 2nd reading amendments, the tolerance crowd began to yell chants from the Senate balcony. About forty homosexual activists, including the pastor of a large Indianapolis "gay church" were led out of the observation balcony for screaming "jobs, not hate" and other things at Senators. The Senate President closed the gallery. In my 20 years at the state capitol I have seen this sort of behavior from homosexuals fairly often. I have yet to see a group of evangelical Christians, who are routinely labeled as bigoted and intolerant by our culture, disrupt any legislative procedure.

Homosexual activists will often justify their disruptive behavior by saying that it is OK because the legislature is trying to take away their rights. However, there is no right to same-sex marriage. The marriage of two men has never been legally recognized or approved by Indiana law as the moral equivalent of a husband and a wife. Interestingly, there are routinely dozens of pro-life bills filed in every session of the Indiana legislature that do change existing public policies. Yet, to their credit, rarely, if ever, does the "pro-choice"' crowd behave disrespectfully or this disruptively.

The Senate passed HJR 6 on to the 3rd reading stage by a party line vote. It rejected two efforts to nullify the measure by paving the way for civil unions. I hope that most legislators realize that allowing civil unions is not a compromise position. It is a Trojan Horse for the undermining of marriage and both the courts and the homosexual demands groups see it that way.

Here is what the Alliance Defense Fund, one of the top legal organizations in America working in courtrooms across the nation to protect marriage, says about civil unions:

Every time civil unions have been imposed on a state, demands for same-sex "marriage" have followed. The activists lobbying for civil unions really want same-sex "marriage." Since they cannot convince people to redefine marriage (losing 31 out of 31 times when marriage protection or redefinition has been brought to a vote of the people), they pursue strategies such as civil unions as a stop-gap until they get what they really want. The bottom line is that you can't really talk about civil unions without talking about same-sex "marriage" because there really isn't any difference. The goal is the same.

Yesterday, three Senate Democrats joined all the Republicans to pass HJR 6 on a very strong 40-10 vote. The measure will come back in 2013 or 2014. If passed by the legislature in either of those sessions, it will go on the ballot for Hoosier voters to finally have their say in this matter on the November 2014 ballot.