Republican legislators say it’s all about ensuring that marriage is now and will always be between a man and a woman in Wisconsin, but yesterday our GOP legislators showed they care more about dividing people than about preventing gays the ability to marry. The devil here is in the details. If passed by referrendum this fall, the change to the State Constitution would say:

Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.

If their intention was to “protect” the institution of marriage as a heterosexual-only club, then why add the second part? The first sentence would have taken care of that little bit of pontification. I have no problem calling it pontification because our state already defines marriage as between a man and a wife so what’s the difference?

The second sentence makes it so that gays can not have the benefit of other laws such as domestic violence laws and cannot get partnership benefits that some employers want to be able to offer in order to lure qualified job candidates to their companies. (Yes, apparently the GOP now has a problem with business interests and the free market economy.)

Legislative Dems tried to remove the second sentence on the grounds that it would write blatant discrimination into our Constitution. Unfortunately they failed in this attempt.

What they should have done was call for division of the question — a fairly simple parliamentary procedure tactic that is part of Roberts Rules of Order, a set of rules most legislative bodies use to divide up two different issues which are sometimes lumped together to bulldoze through legislation.

That way, voters could look at two different referrendums on the ballot and even if they felt strongly about the first one, the second one would be fairly blatantly a question of whether they hate gays enough to deny them equal protection under the law.

In reality, the division question probably would have failed also but at least then, even the public who opposes (already illegal) gay marriage, would have to ask themselves if the referrendum is more about hating gays or more about protecting marriage.

Links: Wisconsin Assembly Roll Call on the vote to send the question to referrendum in November