Separated at birth?
Left: The worm Smaug.
Right: Idaho Governor C. L. 'Butch' Otter
Lately it's looked like the right-wing homophobes are losing in their national attack on LGBTQ rights. That still seems true. But the fight is far from over in Idaho.
Yesterday, the AP announced that the Idaho Legislature's Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee has approved Governor 'Butch' Otter's request for $1 million from the state's general fund to defend itself in lawsuits against Idaho's ban on gay marriage.
The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reports in a story on Thursday that the committee endorsed a request by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter to transfer the money from the general fund to the Constitutional Defense Fund in anticipation of a legal fight. Idaho law recognizes only marriages between a man and a woman, and a 2006 voter-enacted constitutional amendment bans same-sex marriages. Four couples in November filed a lawsuit challenging Idaho's same-sex-marriage ban, arguing that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees.
The right touts that it is against government interference. LGBTQ people know the truth-- it wants to insert itself so intimately in your personal affairs that it gets to vet who you love and commit to spend your life with. And it claims the right to spend your own tax dollars against you.
Democratic Representative Shirley Ringo, a member of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), opposed the move on the grounds that ban is unconstitutional and will be defeated.
Anti-government sentiment is strong in Idaho, and the GOP will surely use this to attempt to discourage opponents from going to the polls, by fostering a "what's the use?" attitude. But this is the Idaho GOP, pure and simple. It is not politicians in general, nor just a cabal of a few whose bigotry is motivated by religious zealotry. It is the Idaho GOP, under the direction of the governor. Otter is up for re-election this year, hopefully Idahoans will remember this and reject him at the polls for the good of everyone in the state.
Despite the tax-and-spend rhetoric about Democratic officials, this also shows who the spendthrifts are in Idaho. As Ringo has said, the ban is unconstitutional and will be defeated. This is how the GOP thinks Idaho's tax dollars should be spent, wasted on an unconstitutional ban that will go down.
The pile of money that is being amassed to fight LGBTQ rights is going to cause some to lose heart, to feel powerless. In reality, it shows chinks in the armor of the forces of intolerance. The Idaho GOP is formidable but more and more they are telling us just how vulnerable they really are. Think of Bilbo finding the missing scale in Smaug's strong and nasty hide. Vulnerability in a beast as big as this tends to drive it to overkill. They're afraid that they're going to lose because of the decision in Texas, and one has to wonder how many promises and campaign dollars they've traded in the lead-up to this with organizations connected with the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s American Religious Freedom Program, or Idaho's own Cornerstone Family Council, who have been closely involved in protecting the same-sex marriage ban, attempting to put a 'Religious Freedom' law in place, outlawing local anti-discrimination ordinances, and keeping "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" out of the state Human Rights Act. Or, sadly, the LDS Church, which engineered a meeting with legal counsel from ARFP on April 4, the same day that the Pocatello, Idaho city council was scheduled to vote on the city's non-discrimination ordinance.
They need overkill because people don't want this. And through overkill, they are both showing their weakness and are increasingly exposing their hand to voters who may be on the fence, and others who are beginning to question their past support as these attacks continue.
The more representatives like Shirley Ringo that there are in state government, the easier such attacks will be to defeat in the future without such long, painful, and expensive fights.