Heres a short break from the PFC fireworks.
The Idaho senate voted yesterday on a gay-marriage bill today that would change the law to only recognize a marriage between a man and a woman. Not surprising, but here is the kicker; it failed. According to all the reports I have heard through the local media, Idaho is the first state where a ban on gay marriage failed.
Now, I dont know if that exactly puts the state of Idaho on the cutting edge of the gay rights movement, but evidence seems to point to that end. I dont know about anyone else, but that scares the hell out of me to think that Idaho is more progressive than the other states in the nation.
The reason it failed is because, I believe, Idaho is quite libertarian, as evidenced by the large number of people in this state that have attempted to secede from the union. The biggest argument against the bill during the debates preceding the vote was the idea that the government shouldnt be passing laws that limit freedom. I also think the people pushing this bill really shot themselves in the foot by drafting a bill that was so strict when it came to the rights of married people. Under this new law, unmarried heterosexual couples would be denied many of the rights they currently enjoy. The people pushing this bill spent the majority of their time whining about the preservation of the family unit. Meanwhile there are a lot of washed-up musicians in the state who, regardless of their moral stance concerning homosexuality, want to get in on their girlfriends life insurance plan. Never mind the large number of people here who honestly dont care who or what their neighbor chooses to mate with. This is Idaho, for Gods sake, there isnt a lot to do around here besides find new and interesting things to fornicate with.
Now, to be fair, I dont think this decision is going to lead to an endless stream of gay couples coming to the state to be married. As far as I know, nobody in the state of Idaho is going to be marrying gay couples anytime soon. But, on the other hand, the fact that the bill failed means that the current law is open to interpretation.
That is all, I just thought I would bring this to the attention to all those people who bad-mouthed Idaho during my time in Eugene. Thats right, Tim, this state might be populated by a bunch of gun-toting rednecks, but they are gun-toting rednecks that respect the rights of the individual.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 at 11:39 by jeremy and is filed under Northwest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.