Schmuck of the Month

[madamesilverspurs]

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/04/the_gop_members_of_the_house_j.php

The GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee will go down in history -- as shmucks

It was a foregone conclusion from the beginning.

Earlier this year, state representative Mark Ferrandino and state senator Pat Steadman introduced a bill that would have allowed civil unions in Colorado and given gay couples the same right to make a legal commitment as heterosexual couples. Even if it passed through the Democrat-controlled Senate, everyone knew it would be assigned to a "kill committee" in the Republican-controlled House. In the meantime, there was debate, there were impassioned pleas on both sides, there was one of the most hilarious presenters in the history of the Colorado legislature (Anus! Anus! Anus!).



But none of that mattered, because yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee did exactly what everyone had predicted and killed the bill.

In February, Black History Month, millions of kids around the country who were learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s asked their parents why blacks hadn't been allowed on the front of buses, why schools and drinking fountains and bathrooms were segregated, why one group of people was treated differently than another in the country where everyone was created equal.

Many of those parents told their kids this: because fifty years ago, some people were bigoted or ignorant or scared, some just followed the masses and others were just mean.

Fifty years from now, when gay marriage is finally legal and school kids are learning about civil rights in the United States, they'll ask their parents the same questions about how people could be so bigoted and ignorant, and why politicians protected those bigots.

And those parents will be able to open their history books (or Kindles) and look back on people like representatives Brian DelGrosso, B.J. Nikkel, Bob Gardner, Mark Barker, Mark Waller and Jerry Sonnenberg and explain why.


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