Maryland Anti-Gay-Marriage Law Stopped

Montgomery County State Senator Bill Frosh was able to lead a move to indefinitely table a bill that would have made same-sex marriages illegal. I'll let the Baltimore Sun tell you:

An attempt to revive a constitutional amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriage failed in the Maryland Senate today, apparently leaving no further options this year for opponents of gay marriage.

With a proposal to amend the state constitution languishing in committee and only two weeks left in the General Assembly session, Senate Minority Leader J. Lowell Stoltzfus, R-Somerset, resorted to a rarely used parliamentary move to try to bring the amendment out of the Judicial Proceedings Committee. He submitted a petition asking the Senate to bypass the committee and put the amendment on the agenda for debate.

But Sen. Brian Frosh, D-Montgomery, chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, immediately responded with another unusual move, making a motion to table the Stoltzfus petition indefinitely.

The Frosh motion was approved on a 26-21 vote, and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, D-Calvert, ruled that the amendment cannot be brought up again this session. Seven Democrats joined all 14 Republicans in an unsuccessful attempt to revive the amendment.

The House of Delegates had voted 78-61 earlier in the session to defeat a motion to override the House Judiciary Committee, which killed the same-sex marriage ban in February.

Gay marriage became an issue this year after Baltimore Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock ruled that the state law defining marriage as between one man and one woman was unconstitutional. That set off an immediate campaign to amend the constitution to override Murdock's decision.

But the state has appealed the ruling, and Democratic leaders predicted Murdock will be overruled by the Court of Appeals. They argued against amending the constitution while the case is on appeal.

There was only brief discussion in the Senate today before senators disposed of the issue. Attempt to revive gay marriage ban fails in Senate

So this is all interesting, isn't it? Even though some Republicans want you to believe that the people of Maryland are opposed to gay marriage, I think when you get down to it the people here, and especially the people of Montgomery County, are pretty fair-minded. What kind of marriage law we end up with seems to be anybody's guess, but it doesn't sound like our state Senate wants to go down this particular path.