I haven’t found a way to get minutes or summaries of committee actions yet so I haven’t been able to get a definitive answer to whether the timing of the legislature passing these bills is suspect. That said, if one looks at the history of the driver’s license bill, one can see it was sitting around in committee for a long time and then was sent to the assembly floor on August 29th. Lest anyone need reminding, that’s the day Katrina hit and is the same day the gay marriage bill made it out of committee.

Also of note, Mark Leno, author of the gay marriage bill , and Patty Berg, author of the donor legislation (AB 849) that was used to resurrect the original legislation (AB 19) are both on the Assembly Appropriations committee.

OK, nobody seems to be reporting this (both the Sac Bee and the SF Chronicle didn’t have it on either their front or politics pages), but the California legislature wasn’t slowed down in their desire to usurp the will of the people by Governor Schwarzenegger’s promised veto of the gay marriage bill.

Late last night the Assembly passed the Illegal Immigrants Drivers License bill. Don’t believe me? Not see it in any of the papers? Well, take a look at these links:

AP artcile on the subject
The actual vote from the assembly floor
The overview of the bill’s state (Note that some of the stuff updates more slowly than other parts, so the history doesn’t reflect last night’s vote while the votes at the bottom of the page shows the vote.)

It’s good to see that the legislature is continuing on their “under the cover of Katrina” strategy to ram their VERY unpopular (you know, so unpopular that it is partially credited with Gray Davis’s recall and undoing it was the first action of our new Governor) bills down our throats.

This is just ridiculous.

So I put my letter to our governor today around noon. By about 8 PM this evening, his press secretary appeared to be reading straight from my letter justifying why the governor was going to veto the bill. Man the US Postal Service is good!

Bravo for Governor Schwarzenegger for doing the right thing!

As promised, I compared the 35-37 vote for AB 19, the failed gay marriage bill in June against the 41-35 vote for AB 849, the successful version with the exact same language as AB 19. Here’s the list of changed votes:

-Bermudez (abstain to yes)
-Chavez (abstain to yes)
-Negrete McLeod (abstain to yes)
-Salinas (abstain to yes)
-Torrico (abstain to yes)
-Umberg (abstain to yes)
-Baca (no to abstain)
-Garcia (no to abstain)

There are two very interesting things to note. First of all, nobody switched sides. Everyone either changed to or from an abstain. Secondly, and I guess this is really just an implication of the first, all those who were new votes for the bill, were all too cowardly to vote for the bill when more intense media scrutiny was on the bill. They all abstained.

While a few of them may be given a pass (and I don’t know which ones these are) for actually not being in Sacramento when the original vote was taken, somehow I doubt that’s why all 6 new yes votes didn’t vote that way the first time around. I’d guess that would account for two at the most.

I’ve decided to dig more fully into the timing of AB 849, the gay marriage bill that was just passed by the California legislature and is awaiting either a signature or a veto on governor Schwarzenegger’s desk. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to link to the page that shows the history of the bill as it is using “post” type cgi scripting and as such it is difficult to recreate the link. I’ll just cut and paste the history for now. If you’re interested in seeing the text yourself go to the California Assembly website, click on the Legislation link on the left, enter AB 849 in the search box and click on the history link of the resulting page. Here it is:

• Sept. 6 Senate amendments concurred in. To enrollment.
• Sept. 1 In Assembly. Concurrence in Senate amendments pending. May be considered on or after September 3 pursuant to Assembly Rule 77.
• Sept. 1 Read third time, passed, and to Assembly. (Ayes 21. Noes 15. Page 2471.)
• Aug. 30 Read second time. To third reading.
• Aug. 29 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 7. Noes 6.).
• Aug. 15 In committee: Placed on Appropriations suspense file.
• July 13 From committee: Do pass, and re-refer to Com. on APPR. Re-referred. (Ayes 5. Noes 2.).
• June 29 Re-referred to Com. on JUD.
• June 28 From committee chair, with author’s amendments: Amend, and re-refer to committee. Read second time, amended, and re-referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 19 Referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 5 In Senate. Read first time. To Com. on RLS. for assignment.
• May 5 Read third time, passed, and to Senate. (Ayes 73. Noes 0. Page 1374.)
• Apr. 28 Read second time. To third reading.
• Apr. 27 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 13. Noes 0.) (April 26).
• Mar. 3 Referred to Com. on W.,P. & W.
• Feb. 20 From printer. May be heard in committee March 22.
• Feb. 18 Read first time. To print.

This is as of Sept. 6th and as such doesn’t contain today’s passing by the Assembly. For those (like most Americans, like myself) who don’t understand all the ins and outs of the legislature, I’ll do my best to decode the language (I had to do some research):

The bill was originally created on February 18th of this year. Although it doesn’t say it in the above text, it was created by Assembly member Berg. The bill had nothing to do with gay marriage. It was about fish and game research and regulations. The bill was in the committee process until April 27th, at which point it went to the Assembly floor. On May 5th it was passed, still in its fish and game format, 73-0 and went to the Senate. I don’t understand how this all works, but instead of being voted on by the senate shortly after May 5th, it went back to committee on May 19th, where it would wait for its transformation.

On June 28th Mark Leno, assumably with Berg’s help (again, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of how this stuff works) was able to re-write the bill to place in it the exact same contents as AB 19, the original gay marriage bill that was defeated on June 2nd in the Assembly 35-37. This had the effect of giving AB 19 new life so that Mark Leno could try again later, perhaps when the timing was better, to get the same bill passed.

At that point, the “amended” bill went back into committee. On August 29th, the day Katrina hit, after sitting around in the Appropriations committee suspense file for two weeks, the committee voted 7-6 to send it to the Senate floor. In fairness to the committee, bills often spend a fair amount of time in the suspense file while other bills are being discussed. I’m not sure if there is a specific ordering or priority. This is what I’d like to find out. Did this bill get bumped up the order to get through on August 29th? Or were they stalling on a vote that should have happened a week prior? Or was it un in the “proper” order and they just moved quickly once the timing was right? Or did nothing suspicious happen at all here and the timing was just lucky? I really don’t know how this all works but I want to dig to the bottom of it. Anyone know more to help me out?

After going to the senate floor, they voted on September 1st 21-15 to pass the bill. In theory, this bill had already been passed by the Assembly (back in its fish and game days). However, since the bill had been amended subsequently to that, it had to go back to the Assembly to be re-voted upon. It passed on September 7th with a vote of 41-35.

That’s all she wrote folks, history wise. I’m going to continue to dig to the bottom of the timing in the Appropriations committee to fully understand the timing. It seems pretty suspicious to me that it was passed by the committee THE EXACT SAME DAY that Katrina hit. Also expect analysis later this evening of who’s votes changed since the Assembly voted down AB 19 35-37. Remember that AB 849 was the EXACT SAME law (as in identical text) as AB 19. It passed 41-35. I’ll give you the rundown on who’s votes switched without the media scrutiny that would have been given this bill in normal circumstances.

Well, the shit has hit the fan! The California assembly just passed (41-35, 41 being the minimum number of votes needed to pass the bill) the gay marriage bill that the California senate sent them a few days back. Because it already passed in the senate (and very quietly I might add) it now it goes to Gov. Schwazenegger to either veto or sign.

I’m not sure what angers me more:

– That we already voted on this as a state and 61% of us said no. Talk about usurping the will of the people.
– That doing it now, when the attention of the people is focused elsewhere, is a blatent attempt to avoid the wrath of the people (who would be placing a lot more pressure on the legislature to vote against the bill).
– That the decision is morally wrong.

I guess the final item really upsets me the most, but the other two bother me the most in a political fashion.

What I love is how groups try to sugar coat this. Reading the ever unbiased SF Chronicle artcile you get quotes like: “The bill, AB849, does not require any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples.” Actually, since it is illegal for any organization, church or otherwise, to discriminate against a gay person in their hiring practices and if gay marriage is allowed they will be forced to provide marital benefits to the other person in the partnership, then churches will be forced to support and recognize gay marriage. If you don’t think this is true, just ask all the Catholic organizations who are forced to provide FREE birth control pills as part of their health insurance despite the Church’s belief that any form of birth control is morally wrong.

Also, to act as if the legislature is being generous by not “requiring” churches to perform gay marriages is ridiculous. Churches aren’t required to marry anyone and can discriminate in any fashion they want, including racially and sexually, in regards to the church’s membership and what ceremonies they’ll perform for/on anyone, including members. (Notice that this is separate from hiring practicies.) Do you think that if the state had any right to regulate in this fashion that the Catholic Church could get away with an all male priesthood? Absolutely not.

Here’s what to expect from here: The governor has a tough choice on his hands. He hasn’t wanted to get tangled up in moral issues because it is not really the focus of his governorship. But, he’s got no choice now. If he thinks he can sign the bill and place the blame on the legislature, he’s sorely mistaken. He will be held accountable by the 61% of Californians who think gay marriage is a bad idea. Of course if he vetoes it, he’ll be stepping in the middle of a subject he didn’t want to get involved in. So, he’s got a tough choice to make and I hope he vetoes it. If he vetoes it, the legislation is dead. The legislature doesn’t have the votes to overturn a veto. What’s left then for the proponents of the legislation is their legal challenges to Prop. 22 (the proposition that made gay marriage illegal).

For the opponents to the legislation, they will be pushing forward with the constitutional amendment to make gay marriage contrary to the state constitution with even more vigor now that it is clear that they can’t keep the legislature from trying to make it legal. Without the constitutional amendment, it’ll only take a pro-gay governor to change the landscape. Similarly, if Schwarzenegger signs the bill, they’ll immediately challenge the legislation saying that it is contrary to Prop. 22, which, from my understanding, should take precedence. So no matter what, if the bill is signed or vetoed, the issue is still headed for more legal challenges.

So here is what I’ll be doing:

– The governor will be getting a letter from me today. I hope that everyone who reads this blog will do the same.
– I’ll be writing my assemblyman and state senator thanking them (in my case they voted against the legislation) for their votes and encouraging those who live in districts with representatives who voted for the legislation to write them letters rebuking them for their votes.
– I’ll be considering a donation or other forms of support to one or more of the prominent groups fighting for the constitutional amendment including www.voteyesmarriage.com and Campaign for Children and Families.

I encourage all to do the same.