Culpeper Star-Exponent
April 15, 2006
By Tully Satre, Culpeper
The 2006 General Assembly session sent a message to Virginia that the majority in our legislature want to step back in time. Issues of basic civil liberties joined transportation at the top of the list of discussions and debates for the General Assembly.
One of the most controversial efforts this year seeks to write discrimination into Virginia’s Constitution and restrict private contractual rights. The Marshall/Newman amendment (the so-called Virginia “Marriage Amendment”) was brought up in House committee the very first day the General Assembly came into session in January. The bill quickly sailed through the legislature and onto the November ballot.
Gov. Kaine took the amendment into careful consideration and, after thoroughly reviewing the language, realized that the Marhsall/Newman amendment goes too far. A recent Washington Post article quoted Kaine as saying he was concerned “about the broad wording of the proposed constitutional amendment … it [threatens] the constitutional rights of individuals to enter into private contracts, and the discretion of employers to extend certain benefits, such as health care coverage, to unmarried couples.”
Our governor added, “For those reasons, I will vote against the marriage amendment in November, and I urge other Virginians to vote against it as well.”
Tell me another one
The constitutional amendment process in Virginia requires that an “official state explanation” of each proposed amendment be published on the State Board of Elections website and in ads in large daily newspapers, and be made available for distribution by local voter registrars.
This explanation, according to state code, must be in “plain English,” and be neutral with regard to the amendment.
According to the AP, the House and Senate Privileges and Elections Committees have been sent draft language for an explanation of the Marshall-Newman amendment by the Division of Legislative Services, along with a memo that reads:
So far, the office of Attorney General McDonnell has no comment on his proposed edits. Does anyone imagine that McDonnell has either the capacity or the intention to apply neutrality to this process? Let’s not be ridiculous. All hopes for putting this nonsense over on the people of Virginia have always hinged on misrepresenting it.
We eagerly await further news of how the AG will attempt to alter this document. What magic tricks can he perform to conceal the intent and likely effects of the Marshall-Newman amendment, especially with its full language in plain sight?
How can anyone claim with a straight face that the following text is about “marriage,” and not someone’s personal zeal for making unmarried people second class citizens of Virginia?
“We have married people and we have single people,” McDonnell told the AP in 2004, when he was aggressively pushing for this measure in the Virginia General Assembly. We’d like to see an honest explanation of what he means by that.