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March 28, 2011 06:36 PM UTC

To the members of the House Judiciary Committee - the time has come

  • 13 Comments
  • by: allyncooper

(Goldwater and Reagan would have agreed. – promoted by MADCO)

SB 172 is now before your committee for consideration to the Committee of the Whole.  As you well know, SB 172 would provide in statue authorization permitting two unmarried adults to enter into a civil union.

There are those well-meaning fellow Coloradans among us who say the time is not right for this bill.  They say given the current economic conditions, when our unemployment rate is now at 9.3%, and the state continues to have serious budget problems and faced with draconian cuts in services and aid to education, we need to put this bill on the shelf and perhaps revisit it in the future.

To those who say the time is not now to enact SB172 into law to ensure the basic civil rights of all Coloradans to live their lives as they wish and responsibly provide for the means to do so, then when?  Shall we postpone the granting of legal process and  protection to all of our citizens until the unemployment rate is 5%, or until the housing crisis is over, or until the Legislature doesn’t have to deal with a billion dollar deficit every session?  Just what shall be the criteria? Such reasoning is disingenuous and illogical, because the denial of the civil rights of any of our citizens cannot be subrogated to the economy or any other extraneous issue.

On April 16, 1963 Martin Luther King sat in a Birmingham jail and penned a letter to fellow clergymen who had criticized his activities of ending discrimination in that city as “unwise and untimely”. He was questioned why he had chosen that time and place, why he just didn’t back off and wait because discrimination and segregation would eventually be recognized for the wrongs they were.  Martin Luther King’s response was simple and direct – “I am here in Birmingham because injustice is here”.  

King went on to say in his letter “For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice delayed is justice denied”.

Martin Luther King knew the time had come.

In the first two years of his presidency,  John F. Kennedy cautiously tread a fine line between tepid support of civil rights and appeasing the segregationist Democratic  legislators in Congress whose support was essential to passage of his legislation.

But by the spring of 1963, with Martin Luther King jailed and the consequences of that justice delayed and denied becoming more pronounced with the murders,  beatings,  and bombings, Kennedy addressed the nation on June 11, 1963 on television.

“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution”.  Kennedy went on to say the injustice and the discrimination of the Negro could no longer be tolerated and that “the nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. Now, the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise”.

A day after Kennedy’s speech, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, a veteran of the D -Day invasion at Normandy, was shot in the back and killed in front of his wife and children.  On June 19, 1963 Kennedy submitted to Congress the most far reaching civil rights bill in the nation’s history.

John F. Kennedy did not live to see this nation fulfill its promise, but he knew the time had come.

I happen to be heterosexual, and I believe that’s the way my Creator made me. Just as I believe the Creator made some of my fellow human beings a different sexual orientation, or a different race. And who am I to question that? Do I know better than my Creator?  My sexual orientation should be of no more concern to you than yours’ is to me or anybody else.  We are all children of God, and we all have a right to be here and live our lives with those we love and care for and choose to call our family with equal protection under the law.  This is the fundamental essence of our society that binds us together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.

At the 1948 Democratic Convention, Hubert Humphrey passionately argued for a strong civil rights plank proclaiming  “the time has come…..to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights”.  Colorado is blessed with abundant sunshine, and the time has come to make it even brighter by recognizing the human rights of all our citizens.

Members of the Committee, I urge you to favorably act on SB 172 for consideration by the Committee of the Whole.

Because the time has come.  

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13 thoughts on “To the members of the House Judiciary Committee – the time has come”

    1. I think the message is for Dems to hold true to these principles. If they can stay united on the committee, there might be a GOPr who will also vote on principle.

      That is, until it comes to the floor. Because, realistically, I don’t think the house will pass this. A recorded vote for principle will all but guarantee a nasty primary for the GOP’r in their current phobic state — according to my scratchy and hazy Crystal Ball of Semi-reliable Prognostication, anyway.  

      1. but absolutely believe Conti will do what she needs to to keep her seat. Leadership already screwed her a little; that’s why she announced it early and loudly. It’s what her little swing district wants.

        All the far right has to do is blame it on the Dems and those fucking RINO’s. Next time give them a larger majority and the other place. Shit like this won’t happen, blah, blah, Tancredo, blah. Protected!

        FWIW, your reasoning is why I don’t trust the committee to do anything other than look out for themselves. They are not in swing districts and will probably face primaries if the let it out. They will also probably lose those primaries.

        Right v Easy (The House Judiciary Committee should feel free to prove me wrong and make me publicly say that I respect your courage.)

  2. I’ve never been so eager to be proven wrong.

    Regardless, I will be sporting red under the gold dome on Thursday. We should have a pols meet up, or a flower, maybe a paper clip, something.

      1. Before Republicans trash-talked the trial and appellate courts into irrelevancy and packed the Supreme Court with vicious and corrupt ideologues, the third co-equal branch of government was the place to go to get your rights.

        Sadly, it’s only the place to go these days if you’re a gun or a corporation, not a person. If you’re a person you’re screwed, and not in the good way.

  5. Goldwater didn’t care if the guy in the fox hole next to him was gay or straight.   He only cared if he could shoot straight.

    Cheney said  freedom is for everyone or no one.  We can’t discriminate because what others do offends us.

    The opposition is pure and simply religious.  This battle is much larger than gay rights.  This is the heart of separation of church and state.  Are we to have a theocracy or are we to have a democratic republic.  The battle is nothing short of that.

    1. Goldwater was supporting gay/lesbian rights groups in AZ after he retired. The election of Reagan was when the religious right started taking over the GOP, which Goldwater opposed.  

      Some of Goldwater’s statements:

      * I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state.  The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.”

      (in a 1994 Washington Post essay)*

      “The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others.”

      * “I don’t have any respect for the Religious Right.”

      * “Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell’s ass.”

      * “A woman has a right to an abortion.”

      In 1981, Goldwater stated the following:

      “”There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’ ” (1909-1998) US Senator (R-Arizona) Source: Congressional Record, September 16, 1981

      Sadly, he probably couldn’t get elected today as a Republican. And this should tell you exactly what’s wrong with the GOP.  

      1. “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.”

        Goldwater said that in congressional testimony when they were putting DADT into place. Like Clinton and the rest I think he supported DADT because it was intended to make life better for gays and reduce discharges, but the old guard in the military ensured that the opposite was true by starting the practice of third-party outings, undercover surveillance at gay bars and pride festivals (until that was correctly ruled to be “asking”).

        Mark also often tells stories about Goldwater carpooling to debates with Mo Udall where they would kick each other’s asses across the stage, and then go have dinner together and carpool home. He uses that vignette to demonstrate his other favorite Goldwater quote–“you can disagree without being disagreeable.” I doubt Goldwater came up with that one originally, but I guess he used it a lot.

        It was a different age in Republican politics. Others with similar views like Bob Barr and David Frum have been drummed out of the party.

  6. And it will live in the history books forever, just as Mississippi & Alabama live forever as the last states to fight against equal rights for African Americans.

    This legislature doesn’t decide if Colorado will have Civil Unions, it just decides if we’ll have them now or in two years. The majority of people in this country know what’s right, the only question is do the GOP reps know.

    The GOP legislators get to decide if they will be a final rearguard fight for bigotry or if they will embrace equal rights for all. Here’s hoping they choose equality for all.

  7. This is an excellent post, with which I agree wholeheartedly.  I think the time has come to put the radical religious right out of the playing field on this matter. They claim this a moral offense to marriage, but I know of no just reason to deny civil unions on the basis of sexual orientation.  The religious right claim that the Bible finds homosexuality offensive, but there are many things that the Bible finds acceptable that are viewed with abhorrence in our modern times, such as slavery.  The religious right feels compelled to deny gays the right to marry because they feel that the sanctity of marriage is somehow ruined by gay unions.  But how is that so?  It seems to me that divorce and infidelity are the evils that damage the sanctity of marriage, not the fact of allowing gays to marry who they love.  As a Christian I find discrimination against gays and lesbians to be morally and ethically and socially wrong.  If you believe otherwise, then you have to ask yourself why your opinion of God is so small.

    Justice is never perfect, but equal rights belong to everyone in this country, and it is a birthright of every American to have equal rights under the Constitution.

    I urge the House Judiciary Committee to look past party lines and view this bill as a civic and moral necessity, one for which their positive votes will be remembered forthrightly as giving all citizens regardless of their sexual orientation equal protection under the law.

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