Gibbons to veto Nevada Domestic Partnership Bill

Nevada Republican Governor, Jim Gibbons

As would be expected Governor Jim Gibbons says he will veto the Nevada Domestic Partnership bill according to The Huffington Post.

The Nevada legislature has passed two gay rights bills, one that outlaws job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and another that establishes domestic partnerships for gay couples.

Gibbons has five days to veto it. “The bill originally passed the Senate on a 12-9 vote, two short of two-thirds. It passed the Assembly 26-14 with two members absent and would need 28 votes to override,” says The Huffington Post.

State Senator David Parks says he has the votes to override a veto.

There is a fly in the ointment. “Nevada voted for a constitutional amendment in 2000 and again in 2002 that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The new bill specifically states that domestic partnership is not a marriage.”

That will raise, I suspect, a state constitutional challenge of the new Domestic Partnership Law in the Nevada Supreme Court. One issue that comes to mind is whether the new Domestic Partnership Law is construed as a marriage or as a contract.

If some sort of contract the constitution may not prohibit the law at all.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of persons in Nevada live together as though married with no apparent difficulty.

One aspect of this brings to my mind the continued position of the Republican Party about keeping government’s nose out of people’s personal business. They say that, but had no hesitancy in their intrusion into the Teri Schaivo case in Florida. They even went to the extreme of holding a midnight session in Congress to pass a bill authorizing the federal government to intervene in the Schaivo family matter about whether to pull the plug on Mrs. Schaivo’s life support system so she could pass on peacefully.

Compare that intrusion with this statement quoted in the Huff Post.

“The governor believes that government has no business in your medicine chest or your bedroom,” spokesperson Daniel Burns said. With good reason: Gibbons who filed for divorce in 2008, allegedly had having an affair with playboy model Leslie Durant, as well as sending more than 860 text messages to another woman, Kathy Karrasch, from his state-owned cell phone. When Gibbons was running for governor, he was accused of sexually assaulting a cocktail waitress.”

The domestic partnership bill, would give same-sex couples equal rights to married partners in areas like estate planning, medical decisions, community property and child custody.

I can’t find anything wrong with that. We all talk about civil rights, freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How does the fact that two same-sex individuals want to live together like man and wife affect any heterosexual marriage? What about “family values” the Republican Party harps so much about?

Matters of estate planning, medical care, community property and child custody, warrant recognition in law for homosexual couples as much as for heterosexual couples, it seems to me.

It is an issue of civil rights.

Going forward we can expect to hear and read all sorts of views from all sorts of positions.

Maybe, somewhere along the line the whole issue will wind up in the United States Supreme Court and a decision made, pursuant to the United States Constitution, that will become the law of the land and override all state constitutions, statutes, and governors.

Related posts:

1. Senate overrides Domestic Partnership Veto
2. Domestic Partnership Law is in trouble
3. Domestic Partnerships Now Law in Nevada
4. Gibbons sets a veto record
5. Nevada’s Senate upholds Governor Gibbon’s Veto