Senate overrides Domestic Partnership Veto

There is light on the horizon that Nevada may emerge as a tolerant state. The Nevada state Senators voted 14-7 yesterday to override Governor Jim Gibbons’ veto of the domestic partnership bill, Senate Bill 283.

The state Assembly gets their chance to do the same today. If the Assembly overrides the Gibbons veto it

would allow same- and opposite sex couples to secure domestic partner contracts that essentially given them the same rights and responsibilities s heterosexual married couples. [Las Vegas Review Journal]

Republican state Senator Dennis Nolan, Las Vegas, said “he had received many vulgar and even threatening calls from people who demanded he…” uphold the Governor’s veto.

Those kinds of calls do not mesh with the “Christian beliefs I was brought up with,” Nolan said. “We have an obligation to ensure equal rights to all our citizens,” Nolan said. “I believe in my heart that I am doing the right thing.”

Nolan and state Senator Dean Rhoads (R-Tuscarora) both voted against the bill last April on a 12-9 Senate vote, then joined the 12 original supporters to override Gibbons’ veto.

Rhoads got many e-mails from straight couples who would be helped by the domestic partnership bill. He finally recognized that “It isn’t marriage; it’s a domestic relationship. That’s what swung my vote that way.”

My hat tip to Republican Senators Nolan and Rhoads for taking the right step. Yes it is a domestic relationship and not a marriage. They are two different things. And it does equalize rights of all by moving away from the intolerant view of some who are insistent upon imposing their views on others who in no way harm the sanctity of marriage of others. Score one for the Republicans.

Now all we have to see is whether the Assembly displays the same courage as the Senate.

Related posts:

1. Domestic Partnership Law is in trouble
2. Gibbons to veto Nevada Domestic Partnership Bill
3. Domestic Partnership Veto Override Today
4. Domestic Partnerships Now Law in Nevada
5. Nevada’s Senate upholds Governor Gibbon’s Veto