Wyoming: The Ex-Equality State

[Ian David]

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The Wyoming Senate didn't have a lot of pressing bills. What to do? Of course, rush through the anti-Massachusetts marriage bill!

We were sort of waiting for the House follow-up, but there's no hurry on that side apparently. A bill originated in one chamber there gets moved to the other on passage. There it goes through committee and if approved must pass in the identical form in both to become law.

In damned good coverage by AP writer Ben Neary, the thinking of the senators is bare. That's particularly good, as they took an unrecorded voice vote to pass the bill.

The seemingly naive aged chief sponsor, Sen. Gerald Geis, claims the bill just reinforces the existing law defining marriage as one man/one woman. Actually it asserts that it voids out-of-state same-sex marriages. This is the only class of marriage that the state treats this way. If an out-of-state union would be incestuous or underage by Wyoming law, bring to Cheyenne; that's just fine.

Geis says he's just trying to keep on the good side of Bill Clinton's federal DOMA law. In reality, it is trying to turn comity on its head by going beyond refusing to recognize same-sex marriages and voiding them. Take Wyoming residence and poof, you're unmarried.

The irony of this happening in the self-nicknamed Equality State was not lost on everyone.

More:
http://massmarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/ex-equality-state.html