November 29, 2004
(Updated) Republican State Senator To Introduce Civil Unions Legislation
State's Righteous Wing Announces Opposition To Plan
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
According to this evening's late-night KOIN newscast, this coming January Senator Ben Westlund intends to introduce civil unions legislation granting gay and lesbian couples the same legal rights as hetrosexual married couples.
The newscast offered no real details of Westlund's plan, but reported the story as if the rights and benefits would be technically equal to those accessible through state-sanctioned marriage.
Enter the righteous wing.
"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck," said the infamous John Belgarde of the Christian Coalition of Oregon in KOIN's story. "Basically it's just another attempt to legitimize homosexual marriage."
We've long since lost the link, but several months ago there was a story out of California in which opponents to same-sex marriage were arguing that a law regarding domestic partnerships violated a probihition against same-sex marriage -- basically, they insisted, anything that gives gays and lesbians any of the rights and benefits of marriage necessarily must be construed to be close enough to actual marriage to be covered by any prohibition of same-sex marriage.
Thanks to Belgarde and his bigoted bretheren, that view of things appears to be staking its claim here in Oregon now as well, as we always knew it would. According to KOIN, the Coalition has joined forces with other organizations (though the report didn't name them) and opened an office in Salem in order to fight Westlund's plan.
For whatever it's worth, and for the sake of memory and context, the original court ruling in Oregon's same-sex marriage battle included an instruction to the Oregon Legislature that it had to take up the matter of extending the rights and benefits of marriage, in some fashion or another, within a specified time period after coming back into session.
We don't recall whether or not there's a hold on that order while the case continues to make its way to the Oregon Supreme Court (which happens on December 15), or whether the Legislature is still beholden to that ruling. If it is, Westlund's plan would apear to fall within the timeframe that had been specified.
Update
We now notice from this Google News search that this story was yet another example of KOIN's rather incompetent reporting skills. While they reported the story as "KOIN has learned" it's obvious from that search that Westlund's plans have been known for at least a week, as can be seen from this Associated Press story from November 22.
"It's just the right thing to do," the Tumalo Republican says. "Nothing in Measure 36 prevents the Legislature from affording equal rights and privileges to same-sex couples."
Funnily enough, as we were preparing to post this item after seeing KOIN's report, we remember thinking about how we've caught KOIN being piss-poor journalists in the past. Unfortunately for us, we didn't do such a good job either. In this case, a good job would be defined as running the above Google News search before we posted this item at all, so it would have been clear to us from the start that KOIN was reporting -- and we were passing along -- old news.
Comments (3)
The One True b!X on 29 Nov 2004
Speaking of the Oregon Supreme Court, anyone have any rule-of-thumb (if such a thing even exists in this case) for how long OSC hearings take? This one on December 15 starts at 1:15 PM, and I need to know what return-trip bus ticket to buy.
Scott on 30 Nov 2004
Not long, I'm told. An hour or two for each side. Perhaps a bit longer in this case. But you'd better get there early, since seats will go fast.
Scott on 02 Dec 2004
Ok, the deal is that there's a 49-person cap in the courtroom, and that includes the justices, staffers, attorneys, bailiffs, etc. Meaning there will be little room for the press, let alone interested citizens. They're apparently setting up a lottery system, which really sucks for people taking the bus from Portland to Salem. However, they do have a video feed that will be going out to the Capitol News Network, which is accessible somewhere at the capitol mall. It also may be picked up on cable, and perhaps even C-SPAN. The OSC will have more info on its website between now and then. b!X, email me if you want more info, or even a ride.