Virginia Senate Kills GOP Gay Marriage Defense Bill

Following Attorney General Mark Herrings decision to cease the state's defense of the unconstitutional Marshall-Newman Amendments, the usual Republican gay haters in the Virginia House of Delegates rushed to introduce a bill that would have allowed any member of the General Assembly to represent the state in defending a law or constitutional provision that the Office of the Attorney General failed to defend.  The measure, which sailed through the GOP controlled House of Delegates which always does the bidding of Virginia Christofascists, would have been a recipe for chaos and would have allowed crack pots like Del. Bob Marshall to engage in all kinds of lunacy.  Thankfully, the bill has been killed in the Virginia Senate.  Expect much spittle flecked convulsions from the gay haters.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

The Democratic majority on a Virginia Senate committee this morning predictably quashed a bill from the Republican House of Delegates to let Virginia lawmakers defend state laws when a governor or attorney general declines to do so.

That measure, HB 706 from Shenandoah County Del. Todd Gilbert, was tabled in the Senate Rules Committee on a 12-4 party line vote, with the panel's GOP minority powerless to prevent that.

Gilbert's bill to empower the General Assembly or any individual member to intervene in protection of a state law not being defended by top executive branch officials doesn't mention any particular law.

But it comes against the backdrop of new Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring's decision to seek the overturn of a state ban on same-sex marriage, rather than preserve it.

The GOP-dominated House passed Gilbert's bill by a wide majority earlier this month, just ahead of a U.S. District Court hearing in Norfolk on a lawsuit by two gay couples challenging Virginia's marriage restrictions.

Last week, the judge who heard that case ruled the state's same-sex marriage laws unconstitutional.

Although Gilbert's bill failed Friday, the House is also attempting to rein in Herring with language in its budget directing the attorney general to abandon his legal assault on Virginia’s gay-marriage ban.

Until the power of the religious extremists at The Family Foundation over the Virginia GOP is broken, don't expect much sanity from the House of Delegates.