Chaffetz Bill To Force Discrimination In DC Fizzles
When you’re looking through congressional bills, it’s essential to look beyond the title and summary to the meat of the matter. H.R. 4430, which was introduced to the House of Representatives on Wednesday, is a good example of a bill that isn’t what it at first appears to be.
The legislation, written by Representative Jason Chaffetz, is constructed so as to appear that it’s in favor of local control by the people of Washington D.C. It’s entitled the District of Columbia Referendum on Marriage Act, and its summary in the Library of Congress database describes the legislation as a bill “to protect the democratic process and the right of the people of the District of Columbia to define marriage.”
That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Who, after all, would seek to oppose the democratic process? Who would say that the people of the District of Columbia don’t have the right to define marriage?
Actually, activists of the Religious Right have long insisted that nobody has the right to define marriage. They claim that there is a single eternally true definition of marriage, and demand that nobody ever be allowed to deviate from that definition, especially not through the democratic process.
Ah, but what good is consistency, when there is a cultural agenda to push? Congressman Chaffetz is aligned with the Religious Right, and the Religious Right demands that there will be no marriage equality for same-sex couples, so if opposing marriage equality means adopting a pose of allowing democratic choice for the definition of marriage, Chaffetz will do it.
Here’s the trick, though: The democratic process has already been at work on the issue of same-sex marriage in Washington D.C. for some time. Through the democratic process, the D.C. city council has voted, twice, by overwhelming margins, to approve the equal legal recognition of the marriages of same-sex couples.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is that Jason Chaffetz and his allies don’t like the outcome of the democratic process in D.C., and so they’re seeking to block it with Chaffetz’s bill. The legislation would force Washington D.C. to ignore its own laws in order to establish a public referendum on the issue of marriage equality. The Chaffetz bill doesn’t just give Washington D.C. the option of holding a referendum. It mandates a referendum, whether D.C. residents want it or not.
However, the democratic process in Washington D.C. has previously established the ground rules for referenda: No referendum can be held on a matter that could deprive residents of legal rights. A referendum on whether same-sex couples can enjoy equal rights of marriage therefore cannot be held in Washington D.C.
Congressman Chaffetz is seeking to overturn not just one local laws, but two local laws, created by Washington D.C.’s own democratically-elected representatives. No matter what the title and summary of his bill contend, the legislation is clearly attempting to interfere with the democratic process, not to protect it.
Furthermore, this power play by Representative Chaffetz has proved to be profoundly ineffective. So far, the bill has only one cosponsor: Jim Jordan. Neither Chaffetz nor Jordan even come from states that border upon Washington D.C. Eleanor Holmes-Norton, the non-voting Representative of the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives, supports the passage of same-sex marriage there.
On many levels, simultaneously, the democratic process has made a consistently clear statement: Allow marriage equality in Washington D.C.
EXCUSE ME??? Not only has this bill NOT fizzled, but in the dozen or so calls I made this morning on this bill, I’ve personally gotten at least FIVE more Members of the House to agree to sign on, including my own Member of Congress. The others all said they’d convey this to the Member, but literally five of them said they knew this is something the Member would support.
The only “outcome” Congressman Chaffetz doesn’t like is the fact that the voters were illegally denied their right to put this issue on the ballot as outlined in the DC Charter. I don’t think you’d find him at all objecting if the voters of DC had actually said by their real individual vote, “Yeah, we really want gay marriage in our nation’s capitol.” But they never got the chance!
I find it ironic that the Council members and Mayor – and even their non-voting Member of Congress – proudly claim that this is something the voters of DC want, and yet they flat-out refuse to let them claim this as THEIR choice! How dumb is that – unless you already KNOW the voters of DC would never approve this.
Besides that, the courts may have the final say in this issue. The decision of the Superior Court supporting the Board of Elections decision to deny the voters the right to put this on the ballot is being appealed. It is completely unlikely that any federal court would find that taking away the voters rights like that is acceptable. No other state has EVER done that. Wherever the voters have an initiative process in their state and they have properly petitioned for this question to be on the ballot, they have NEVER been denied that right.
If Congress does nothing and this gay marriage law goes into effect, and then the court some few months later decides in favor of the voters, which they will do, and the voters do decide to repeal this law (which they would), can you imagine the kind of chaos that situation would create? That would be as stupid as the California State Supreme Court repealing their ban on gay marriage in May 2008, allowing gay marriage though they knew full well that question was going to be on the ballot in a few months, and then the voters voted to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. As a native Californian, I can tell you that really was a horrible time. We had County Clerks offices refusing to issue marriage licenses until after the election, and individual clerks asking to be transferred to any job where they didn’t have to issue marriage licenses or conduct marriages. And then AFTER the vote, there was months of uncertainty because there was a distinct possibility that the marriages of those couples conducted during that time would be dissolved. The better decision for the court would have been to stay the implementation of their decision until after the election.
That was a terrible time that absolutely no one wishes on the people of Washington DC. And trust me, this is precisely what will happen if Congress fails to do the oversight job entrusted to them by law. Far better, it seems to me, would be to let the voters make this decision for themselves before this situation becomes like it did in California. Use the ballot initiative process to establish gay marriage if that’s what the voters want, or to establish tradtitional marriage if they choose, but we shouldn’t let the DC Council or the Board of Elections violate the DC Charter in the name of political correctness in a truly stupid attempt to silence voters on this issue.
Karen, there are no new cosponsors for this bill since I wrote the article. There’s already been court rulings, and they uphold the DC law that makes referenda of this sort illegal. It’s a long-standing law, Karen.
Chaffetz’s law is logically inconsistent. If Congress really believes that the only legitimate form of legislation is a popular referendum, then it wouldn’t pass any laws – such as H.R. 4430. To pass a legislation in a representative legislature that claims that legislation passed in a representative legislature is inherently illegitimate is absurd.
I’ll believe this is about the sanctity of the referendum the day that Jason Chaffetz puts a referendum on the ballot allowing voters to decide whether to void his marriage. I mean, hey, let the voters decide, right? Hello?