NH House Judiciary: Executive Session on CACR 28:

"PROVIDING THAT: the state shall only recognize the union of one man and one woman as marriage."

Commentary by Timothy Horrigan; August 3, 2010


CACR 28 was one of several attempts in the New Hampshire legislature to kill marriage equality in New Hampshire.  Some rightwing Republicans introduced two repeal measures even before the marriage equality laws took effect on January 1, 2010. These measures failed big-time, by almost a 2-1 margin after about a third of the Republican caucus, moderates and rightwingers alike, crossed over and voted with the Democrats.  CACR 28 was the nastier of the two bills which failed.  It would have placed the following grossly discriminatory language in the Bill of Rights:

(One of CACR 28's sponsors is a colleague whom I say good things about elsewhere on this web site, Dan Itse, the prime sponsor of the pro-Jeffersonian Democracy resolution HCR 6.  All I can say is, CACR 28 was a mistake on his part.  He has strong principles, and I respect him for that— but this time I think he went in the wrong direction.)

I used a video by someone who calls himself or herself "impolitical" on my "New Hampshire Republicans Gone Wild" page, which was one of four videos of CACR 28's executive session in the House Judiciary Committee.  I decided it might be nice to collect all four on one page, so you can view the whole session.  This session is most famous for Rep. Nancy J. Ellliott's career-ending (for the time being) meltdown, but that is not its only point of interest.

This bill was "execked" on February 9, 2010.  The majority voted to "ITL" the bill (i.e., to kill it.) We killed the bill on Saint Patrick's Day by almost a 2-1 margin.



Part 1 of 4:


Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu8WIaZCz0U

Part 2 of 4:


Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eklBMwcB9LE


Part 3 of 4:

Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB8eyr0mW0o

Nancy Elliott (R-Merrimack) became legendary for her outburst in this segment, when she began gibbering incoherently about penises being wriggled around in excrement and anal sex being taught in the Nashua public schools. Rather amusingly, the other members all politely keep their composure and carry on (for a while) as if nothing unusual had just happened.  And in fact nothing unusual had happened: this was not the first wildly off-topic and counterfactual argument to be made during Judiciary Committee proceedings— and it wasn't the last.

Rep. Elliott followed up her outburst by writing an obscene blurb for the next weekly House Calendar. She agreed to revise it — but the end product, albeit not obscene, is still the stuff of legend:

Part 4 of 4:


Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnbH_Sp_zYg




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