New Hampshire Governor Signs Gay Mariage Bill, But Senate Rules Were Broken to Pass the Bill

  Today the governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, signed gay marriage into law, gay marriages will go into effect on January 1st of next year and all of the same sex couples who currently have civil unions will have their civil unions converted to marriage.

  As a person who believes in both the United States and New Hampshire constitutions I am perfectly willing to accept gay marriage as law even though I do not agree with it, and am not happy about it, as long as the New Hampshire constitution and the rules of procedure in the state house and congress are followed. The people voted in the pro gay marriage politicians and as such I will abide by the will of the people who voted these people into office. (Although I am not sure the will of the people was represented here because if it were, why would the governor have lied about his position on the issue; more on that later.) I will extract my revenge, and hopefully a majority of New Hampshire voters will also, at the voting booth next November.

  My biggest problem with the new gay marriage law, or should I say my two biggest problems with the way the gay marriage bill became law are both procedural issues.

  First, Governor Lynch campaigned as being a moderate who opposed gay marriage. He has spent the last several years claiming that he opposed gay marriage, but we found out a few weeks ago that he would sign gay marriage into law. The governor is a liar. People who voted for him by a 75% majority thought that he was opposed to gay marriage. While that may not have been the number one reason they voted for him, it was part of the package that they thought they were getting with this governor. They were wrong because he has been hiding his true liberal leanings behind a shroud of moderatism. (I know it isn’t a word, but I take a little poetic license here.)

  The questions remain, why did the governor feel that he had to lie about his position? Would he have been elected if people knew his true position on gay marriage? And was the will of the people really served on this issue? We will never know the answer to that last question because a bill that would have allowed New Hampshire voters to weigh in on the issue in the form of a non-binding ballot question was killed. We will never know how the voters really feel about this issue. Perhaps next November we will find out, but it is too late now.

  Second, the state Senate broke senate rules to pass the bill that eventually made it to the governor’s desk. Rather than go into detail myself about the political games that were played in order to pass the bill I have reprinted a New Hampshire Union Leader editorial in full that describes the indiscretion below:

Legislators vote today on amending the same-sex marriage bill so it meets Gov. John Lynch’s approval and can become law. It’s telling, however, that Senate President Sylvia Larsen had to violate Senate rules to get this language passed.

Senate rules require that all committee of conference votes be unanimous. They also require that committees of conference contain senators from each party. When Sen. Sheila Roberge, R-Bedford, refused to sign the conference report approving the amendment to the same-sex marriage bill, Sen. Larsen removed her from the committee and replaced her with Sen. Matthew Houde, D-Plainfield. Voila! The language was passed.

Supporters of same-sex marriage talk all day long about fairness. But to get their bill through, they intentionally violated Senate rules written to guarantee minority approval of controversial legislation. Gov. John Lynch ought to veto the bill for that reason alone. A matter as divisive as this should pass into law by force of persuasion, not by sleight of hand.

   Knowing that the lone vote that would have killed the bill was a Republican the state senate threw the Republican off of the committee and replaced her with a Democrat making the committee, which is required to be bipartisan strictly partisan. This was done willingly, knowing that it was a clear violation of state senate rules. The bill was passed and the rest is history.

  We, the voters of New Hampshire now know that our governor is a liar and that senate rules mean nothing when it comes to passing a liberal agenda. Our governor has failed us and now so has the senate. If we cannot trust the governor to tell us the truth and we cannot trust the senate to follow their own rules what are we left with? 

  You can claim that this is a civil rights issue all that you want, even though the state can deny marriage licenses to heterosexual couples, but that still does not justify the backhanded and illegal way that this bill was passed onto law.