Marriage Equality Debate Continues

12:00pm Delegates look bored waiting for Del. Burns to wind up with many of the ones I see starting to surf on their computers or doing other work and Speaker Busch is resting his cheek in his hand. Burns: "Show me those who had their homes invaded by the KKK and had their homes invaded and churches burned down." before comparing the fight for same-sex marriage to the civil rights movement. Obviously, he has never heard of Matthew Shepherd among numerous others. I guess he also doesn't think that Bayard Rustin was really his equal either.

Unlike African Americans, Del. Burns is now arguing that gays and lesbians can disguise who they are. Now, he is talking about the "homosexual" lifestyle and calling it a "sterile union" and invoking fears that children will be taught that gays and lesbians are equal to others. "This should not be thrust on our children."

12:07 Del. Joseline Pena-Melnyk talking about how civil right leader Gwendolyn Britt was the lead sponsor of this bill before she passed and the quality of the person that Sen. Britt was. "I promised myself that I would live and be like her" when she died. Sen. Britt was a lead plaintiff in a civil rights suit that went ot he Supreme Court, she was arrested for integrating Glen Echol Park, she was a Freedom Rider, and was in jail for 40 days in Jackson, Mississippi.

"I am a person of color. Prior to the Civil War, I could not have voted and prior to 1967, I could not have married my husband because interracial couples were not permitted to marry."

President JFK said "When we grant rights to others which belong to them, we extend rights for ourselves."