House panel defers bill opposing same-sex civil unions
NASHVILLE (AP) — A bill to prevent Tennessee from legally recognizing same-sex civil unions was deferred for a week after a contentious House subcommittee hearing Wednesday.
Tennessee doesn’t allow same-sex civil unions and has a state law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
But same-sex civil unions are being performed elsewhere in the country, and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Clem, R-Lookout Mountain, said the state needs to decide how to handle those unions if the couple become Tennessee residents.
Clem’s bill would specify that same-sex civil unions sanctioned in another state or country would have no legal standing in Tennessee.
“The real question is whether the people of Tennessee have a right to define what civil unions are to be,” Clem said.
During committee discussion, Rep. Beverly Marrero, D-Memphis, asked Clem if his bill wasn’t “unchristian.”
Rep. Steven Buttry, R-Knoxville, responded by saying Marrero’s comment amounted to questioning somebody’s faith. He called it “appalling.”
Clem said he found it interesting that citing Christian principles for conservative causes was considered out of bounds, but not for liberal ones.
After committee chairman Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, had deferred Clem’s bill a week without taking a vote on it and gaveled the meeting out of session, Clem was confronted by an angry citizen wagging her finger in his face, telling him he was wrong and discriminatory.
Clem said afterward that “the ACLU, the homosexual lobby and the Democratic leadership, led by Speaker (Jimmy) Naifeh, want this bill killed.”
“This is their way of killing it without being on the record as voting against it,” he said. “If this bill gets to the floor it’ll get 80 votes.” It requires 50 votes to pass a bill in the House.
Jones said Naifeh had not talked to her about the bill at all.
“Representative Clem doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she said.
Naifeh also said he hasn’t talked to anyone about Clem’s bill.
“I strongly supported the definition of marriage bill we passed, and I don’t appreciate him saying anything about me when we haven’t talked about his bill,” Naifeh said. “It’s obvious he’s only wanting to make this a political issue and doesn’t really care about it. He just wants to call names. I thought he was brighter than that.”
Clem told the committee that the state’s courts need direction on what to do when a same-sex couple who were joined in a civil union in another state ask for certain legal benefits, such as survival benefits that would normally be accorded a spouse.
“It’s just a matter of time before people come into the state with these, and we need to know what to do about it,” he said. “We either need to oppose it or recognize it; we can’t avoid the issue.”
The bill has passed out of committee in the Senate.
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Read HB2627 at Tennessee General Assembly: http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/