Friday, April 3, 2009

Vermont: Sort of WIN


We're back to Vermont, where the State House of Representatives passed an equal marriage bill passed earlier last month in the State Senate.

Now it's back to the Senate because the House added in a religious protection clause that explicitly stated that the law would not force churches and other houses of worship to honor marriages that it does not agree with. Because, then, the law is changed, the Senate has to go back and re-approve it.

The final vote count in the House: 95-52, which is huge, but not as huge as the earlier 26-4 vote in the Senate.

The only problem: Republican Governor Jim Douglas, who has promised to veto the bill. In order to override the veto, there appears to be not problem in the Senate. It is the House that is a problem. They need two-thirds of the body to approve it after a veto... which means they need 100 votes. We are either one signature (the Governor's) or five votes (in the House) from legislatively passing an equal marriage bill.

The question is: who is going to be the one that says, "the buck stops here" and ultimately causes this to fail, if it does?

And, then, what is that person's email address?

1 comment:

Jere Keys said...

The list of who voted which way is here

A surprising number of Democrats on that "no" list, and a couple Republicans did vote "yes." Email addresses can be found at the Vermont state legislature site.