At a time when the state is short millions of dollars to fund its priorities, has critical educational needs and is considering a major restructuring of how government works, spending time on election-year wedge issues is nothing more than wasteful grandstanding.
What's happening in Columbia is that some GOP House members are trying to shore up their conservative bases by introducing bills that don't have much substantive meaning. Gay marriage and the Ten Commandments are perfect examples:
Bypassing arguments on the constitutional separation of church and state, the proposal is essentially meaningless because it only asks Congress to do something. In practical terms, state legislative resolutions frequently get passed and sent to Congress, where they promptly are shelved. Why? Because Congress is busy enough with its own issues.
So why would the resolution be introduced? To allow conservative forces to rally around the Ten Commandments for the media, get a story in the hometown newspaper and seem like they're doing something for conservative allies. In addition, they can use the vote on the measure, which passed 89-19, to target and alienate anybody who opposed the bill. (Many support the values of the Ten Commandments, but voted against the bill because they believe in the separation of church and state.)
In short, it's an election-year political ploy to make some lawmakers look like they are doing something at home and to allow them to use the vote against political enemies in November.
Now comes Reps. Gloria Haskins, R-Greenville, and Marty Coates, R-Florence, who propose two identical bills that say, "Any marriage entered into by persons of the same sex in any other jurisdiction must be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this State and must not be recognized by this State."
Regardless of what you think about the policy of gay marriage, lawmakers supporting the measures seem to be capitalizing on national headlines to say the current clear law isn't good enough. Haskins insisted her proposal wasn't election-year politics, but a measure to reinforce state policy.
"This in no way violates an individual's civil rights," she said. "I'm not intending to tell them what to do. I'm just reinforcing what our public policy is."
Frankly, it is telling someone what they can't do. It's blatant discrimination against a group of people who are easy to pick on. Also, there are lots of people in the state who say the proposal does violate their civil rights.
When asked whether her opinion of the proposal would change if the words "of the same sex" were replaced by "of Latino descent," Haskins, who was born in Colombia, got a little flustered and replied, "That's comparing apples to marbles."
If the proposal had said, for example, any marriages of blacks or Latinos or Irish or WASPS outside South Carolina shouldn't be recognized inside the state, citizen groups, the NAACP, the Christian Coalition, the ACLU and the like would be screaming about the state's backwardness. Just because it targets gays doesn't make the proposal non-discriminatory.
In short, this is what your S.C. House has been up to -- putting election-year politics above the real needs of the state. If you think lawmakers should focus efforts on more important state business, give them a call and let them know your opinion.
Unless you call, you'll see more headlines in coming weeks that highlight hot-button political wedges.