Of Dead Bodies and Powerful Caucuses
Did the title grab your attention? I hope it did.
Yesterday I was down at the State House, and specifically the Senate Judiciary Committee, for the hearing of Sen. J. Res. 7, the marriage amendment. The final outcome of the hearing was a 5-4 party-line vote (with 2 Republicans absent) to send the measure on to the full Senate.
A somewhat surprising “Nay” vote on the committee came from Sen. Jim Arnold (D-LaPorte). I spoke with Sen. Arnold just before the hearing started and he assured me that although he supported SJR 7, he was under the impression that it would not advance in the House (though rumor had it that all of that might change) and was going to vote against the amendment in committee.
It is a little disappointing that Sen. Arnold voted against SJR 7, and I disagree with his reasons for doing so, but it should be remembered that he is not an anti-traditional marriage individual and that his support on the floor will be useful to passing the amendment. Further, future battles on this issue may find him voting with us in committee if he understands that the other chamber will at least hear the measure.
Now, here’s the dead bodies part. Rep. Scott Pelath (D-Michigan City) is the chairman of the House Rules Committee and is essentially Pat Bauer’s water boy on the committee. Pelath recently stated that he would not allow his committee to hear any marriage amendment because “The short session (of the legislature) was designed to deal with emergencies. We have a very serious problem with the property tax system, and we don’t have any gay marriages in Indiana.”
So, according to Pelath, marriage isn’t an important issue and on top of that there is only enough time to deal with “emergencies” during this short session. Of course the operative word there is “emergency” and it looks like Mr. Pelath is not holding to an objective standard here in defining said operative word.
Pelath is the lead sponsor of HB 1144 which is a bill that deals with the failure of individuals to report a dead body. Is this an emergency issue? It passed out of committee 9-0 but I have a hard time understanding why a bill dealing with the reporting of dead bodies can be considered an “emergency” piece of legislation. Have we had a problem with people failing to report dead bodies? Has there been some sort of nationwide crisis involving people hiding dead bodies? Does this issue have as much of an impact on the future of our society as the protection of marriage does? I don’t think so. If we had a serious national or state problem with people failing to report corpses to the authorities, I’d say this bill needs to be quickly considered. However, to think that this issue is more of an emergency than traditional marriage, well, that is a bit over the top.
If Pelath was exercising some sort of uniform standard of “emergency” here I would find his arguments against SJR 7 a little more palatable (but still dead wrong) but it’s even worse when Pelath lives up to a double standard in his own legislative actions.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Meanwhile, the inhumanity of current law, in which inhumanity you seem to have no detectable interest, reached another pinnacle in the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear from a man seeking guardianship and visitation rights related to his partner of 25 years. 3 years ago, his partner had an aneurysm and a stroke and was left incapacitated. The parents of the stricken, who disapproved of the same-sex relationship, refused visitation to a man with whom their son had lived longer than he had with them. The judges of a lower court granted visitation over the objections of the parents, but denied the guardianship that would have been assumed in a marital relationship because Indiana law offers no recognition that any relationship existed at all.
Poor estate and health care planning? Perhaps. But most Americans have no estate planning in place, and rely on the laws to ensure that they are treated with some sense of fairness. Most couples, especially who are not well educated and have no spare resources, would not be able to take the measures necessary to ensure that legal guardianship is in place in the event of catastrophe.
You may root for the parents under these circumstances; most Americans today are rooting for the partner as a matter of justice and decency. The polls show most Hoosiers too when educated about the injustice in the areas of hospital visitation rights and inheritance rights are of a mind that same sex couples ought to be protected. But no protection is afforded, and instead the religious right has opposed such legal protection tooth and nail.
It is when some judge feels a surge of duty and common decency to insist that the Constitution, when it says “Equal Protection of the Laws” shall be afforded to every citizen, means what it seems to, that the religious right cries “activism.” Reading and applying the Constitution isn’t judicial activism; it’s judicial literacy and judicial duty.