Fish Bill Gutted; Now Smells Like Once-Defeated Homosexual 'Marriage' Legislation
by Jody Brown
July 13, 2005
(AgapePress) - If it looks like a fisheries research bill and smells like a fisheries bill, chances are -- at least in California -- that it's a bill promoting homosexual "marriage." One family advocate in the Golden State calls the resurrection of the once-dead legislation "an abuse of process."
AB 849 originally dealt with California's fish and game code and with ocean and marine fishery research. It had been read before the State Assembly, passed, and sent on to the Senate. Now, after being gutted and amended in late June by San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno and his co-authors, it not only has completely new content dealing with "gender-neutral marriage," but a new title as well: the "Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act." (See mark-up of AB 849)
The bill, passed on a party-line vote yesterday (July 12) by the California Senate Judiciary Committee, would amend the state family code on marriage, replacing specific references to gender with the generic "person" or "persons." The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee before the full Senate could vote on it. A similar bill (AB 19) was defeated last month by the State Assembly.
Not surprisingly, Leno -- an open homosexual -- has no problem with the bill's transformation. "I understand there is at times a nefarious reputation to the gut-and-amend process," he tells Associated Press. "That is, rightfully, when it is used at the end of the session, sometimes in the dark of the night when public hearings are short-circuited. Nothing could be further from the truth with this bill."
Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), was among those who testified against the bill before the Judiciary Committee. "It was an absurd hearing," he says bluntly.
"I reminded the committee members that Californians already voted to say only marriages between a man and a woman were valid in California," he says in reference to the March 2000 initiative approved by more than 60 percent of voters. He also pointed out to the committee that the California State Constitution expressly prohibits the Legislature from repealing the people's vote -- and that AB 489 violates that provision. But Democratic members of the Committee, he says, did not care.
According to Thomasson, Los Angeles Assemblyman Gil Cedillo said, "The people aren't always right. The constitution is a 'living' document." Fremont Assemblywoman Liz Figueroa responded, "It's time to celebrate the virtues this building offers us" -- and Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica, one of the bill's co-authors, exclaimed: "I'm proud to be a lesbian!"
The CCF president calls AB 849 "an outrageous attack" on marriage, the voters of California, the state constitution, and democracy. "The Democrat politicians' homosexual marriage agenda trashing the people's vote demonstrates that California ... has become a dictatorship," he says. "This is why pro-family Californians must ... take the marriage protection battle into their own hands."
Toward that end, Thomasson is encouraging marriage traditionalists to support the Voters' Right to Protect Marriage Initiative by visiting the website VoteYesMarriage.com. That initiative calls for an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In addition, the amendment would protect all aspects of marriage -- licenses, rights, etc. -- from courts, government agencies, and government officials.
