What's Wrong With Kansas?

Or Connecticut, depending on the way you lean. As I right this, the CT State Senate is discussion the much hyped civil union bill. They've already rejected an amendment to the bill that would include language defining marriage as between a man and a woman. I know because I've been stalking them.

This is monumental because Connecticut, my blessed home state, would become the first state to enact civil union legislation without court intervention. No one can complain that the process was usurped from the elected representatives. (Well, I guess they can still complain...)

This comes on the heels of Kansas becoming the 18th state to ban same-sex marriage in a state constitution. It's interesting to see the way both processes are working. One is brave, the other cowardly. Not because of what each state is trying to do, but how they are trying to do it.

See, voting is private. You go into a little booth and make a decision and don't have to tell anyone what you decided. Legislative voting, however, is public. People can go into a little booth and vote to treat gays as less than equal citizens and no one needs to know. But if everyone had to wear little buttons on their lapels with how they voted, they'd be singing a different tune. Because no one wants to be accused of being intolerant. But with secret ballots, there's no danger of that. They don't have to back up their convictions.

Why didn't the Massachusetts legislature tackle the gay marriage issue sooner? The court gave them ample time to get the constitutional ban wagon rolling, but they sat on their asses because no one wanted to be accused of being intolerant. Every voter in Kansas who voted for this amendment should be forced to go up to a gay person, look them in the eye, and tell them that they voted to keep him or her from marrying the person that they love.

Because if you feel that strongly about marriage, you should tell the people you're affecting to their faces, and not hide anonymously behind a curtain. That's something a coward does.

UPDATE: Well the bill passed the Senate 27-9. That's fairly definitive. It should pass the House next week.