The following is a letter sent to every Representative in the Indiana House from Indiana Equality Action President Randy Studt. It can also be downloaded here.
February 2,
1010
The Honorable [Representative]
Indiana House
of Representatives
State House
Indianapolis,
IN 46204
RE: Senate Joint Resolution 13
Dear
Representative:
Now that
proponents of Senate Joint Resolution 13, the so-called “Marriage Protection
Amendment” to Indiana’s constitution, have caused the Senate to take valuable
time away from important economic issues in this short legislative session, you
are no doubt being besieged to spend your own precious time as a lawmaker to
deal with it.
The proponents
want you to think that if you don’t go ahead and quickly pass the measure,
“activist judges” are just around the corner to impose marriage of gay and
lesbian couples, civil unions, etc.
That’s simply not true. Even
conservative legal scholars know that Indiana interprets its own constitution
in a way as to apply the very easiest test for constitutionality. Virtually anything a lawmaker can come up
with to justify a rational basis for the current marriage law, the judges
simply won’t second guess.
You are also
being told that SJR-13 is a simple rewrite of SJR-7, its predecessor, in
response to many doubts raised on interpretation. But it’s not that simple. One set of fuzzy
terms, like “substantially similar”, has replaced another. And contrary to what you may have been
hearing about no problems in other states with the same verbiage, there has
been wide disagreements among State Attorneys General and others as to meaning.
In addition,
in a major flip-flop from SJR-7, SJR-13 applies not only to the “activist
judges” that proponents fear, but now also to lawmakers themselves. Previously they had said the General Assembly
would (and should) be free to pass even civil unions, but now without
explanation they’ve stripped away that authority.
Just as
amending Indiana’s constitution is much harder than most other states, so is
changing a constitutional mistake. But
SJR-13 proponents read the polls. Those
surveys show that attitudes concerning these matters are rapidly changing. If SJR-13 were to pass, you will have
essentially helped take away the right of our children and their children to
see their legislators debate and reflect their own will.
That’s the
essence of democracy. It is not locking
in narrow views that discriminate against one class of Hoosier citizens so that
future generations will have no say.
There is no
need to rush to judgment simply because of someone’s idea of political pressure
or pleasing one’s political base.
Marriage is not in danger in Indiana.
The right of democratically elected lawmakers to reflect different and
changing viewpoints is. And Indiana’s
Constitution suffers when discrimination becomes an integral part of our
state’s Bill of Rights.
Sincerely,
Randy Studt,
President
