Lesbilicious - the web’s tastiest lesbian magazine

Hopes that Hawaii would be the next US state to bring in legal recognition of same-sex relationships have been quashed, when the House of Representatives voted against the bill last Friday.

Earlier last week, the Senate had passed the proposed law with relatively little opposition. In a House that was packed with both supporters and opponents, however, the bill was knocked back. Members of the house used a tactic called the “voice vote”, meaning that voting was anonymous and no debate took place. Some observers blame the result on lawmakers who are nervous about introducing a controversial ruling in the same year as an election. “The House put its own political interests before the interests of Hawaii’s families and that’s bad policy and bad politics,” said Equality Hawaii co-chair Tambry Young in a statement.

Hawaii was the first US state to move forward with the same-sex marriage debate, beginning in the 1990s, when the judge in the long-running court case Baehr v Miike decided that the refusal to allow same-sex couples to marry violated their constitutional rights.

The most recent vote means that the bill has effectively been shelved indefinitely, although it could be reintroduced later in the year if a two-thirds majority vote to bring it back.

Posted in: Campaigns & Politics |