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The people of Hawaii want to preserve marriage but their law makers have something else in mind.
This is the CitizenLink Report.
Hi, I'm Stuart Shepard along with Jim Hochberg who is president of the Hawaii Family Advocates
-- an organization that CitizenLink is proudly associated with.
Hi, Jim.
Aloha.
And aloha from Colorado. I don't get to say that very often. As we record this you were
getting ready to head to the State Senate where they're about to vote perhaps for the
final time on redefining marriage. Tell us about that bill? What does it do?
Sure. The bill does a lot of things actually. It makes references in our statues to spouses
or husbands and wives gender neutral throughout. It creates same-sex marriage. It makes the
parentage presumptions apply to female spouses which is kind of strange because in Hawaii
there are programs for native Hawaiians and you have to have lineage to qualify for special
housing rights, educations rights and stuff like that so that's sort of a weird problem.
And it also creates special divorce rights for same-sex couples. They don't have to reside
in Hawaii for the minimum number of months before the court takes jurisdiction over them.
In fact they don't have to come here at all. The court will handle their divorce, their
child custody, their child support, alimony issues without ever meeting the same-sex couples.
It's kind of funny because the title of the bill is relating to equality and it's got
several unequal provisions.
Now perhaps just as important and even more important to people of faith, what does the
bill not do? Who is not protected under this?
Well none of the business people whose industries revolve around weddings; like the bakers, and
the photographers and the florists, tailors, wedding planners; none of them are protected
from their free speech rights of not wanting to participate in a same-sex marriage because
it violates their religious beliefs. Also churches are only protected from being forced
to participate in solemnization or celebration of marriages but not other things related
to marriage like marriage counseling. You know, things like that. Celebrations of anniversaries
or whatever have you. And the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission which enforces our anti-discrimination
laws sees churches that allow non-members to use their facilities as what are called
"public accommodations" which are not allowed to discriminate. So if a church allows the Boy
Scouts to use a room on Wednesday afternoons they are viewed as public accommodations that
are not allowed to discriminate anyways. Now this battle has been going on for 20 years
in your state. A lot of people turned out to express their support for marriage as it
is -- leave it alone.
Correct. On the first day of the special session which was on October 28th, the Hawaii Catholic
Conference together with Hawaii Family Advocates had a rally in the afternoon at the capital
while they were in session and 10,000 people came. The theme was let the people decide
on marriage based on our 1998 constitutional amendment and the Senate totally ignored those
people. And the house had hearings for five days -- 57 hours of hearings -- with the people
repeatedly saying let the people vote on marriage and the house disregarded that as well.
I understand one openly gay representative actually voted against the bill.
What was that all about?
Well she actually gets the fact that individuals who are in business related to wedding functions
should not be forced to participate in same-sex marriages without protection. She gets it.
And I -- she's a hero to me. She actually voted what she though was right rather than
what her constituency wanted. And her constituency actually -- the voters in her area don't want
same-sex marriage. Her gay constituency were giving her a pretty hard time.
And as we've often talked about in discussing this here, this really doesn't seem to be
just about marriage. I mean that's what it is on the face of it but it's really about
reorganizing culture in general and in particular causing Christians to be moved out of regular society.
You're absolutely right. I think Christians, Conservative Jews and Muslims are the only
people left that view homosexuality as an unacceptable lifestyle.
Now from the comments you've making it becomes clear that the real key to this is who gets
elected to office. And CitizenLink worked with your organization to try and get people
into office who would support marriage. Tell us about those efforts.
Well actually Hawaii Family Advocates was incorporated in 20-10 but did not participate
in the election in 20-10. Nothing happened and then in 20-12 about June I took over the
organization and changed the board and we worked with CitizenLink, raised some money
enough to try the great tools that CitizenLink provides in the 20-12 election in one house
race. And it was significantly effective in getting a long time very progressive liberal
Democrat unelected and a young pretty much unknown conservative Republican to replace
her and the win was by 500 points, so it was pretty astounding.
Wow and we're glad to work with you on that kind of project. I do want to give you a minute
just to talk about the work of Hawaii Family Advocates. Tell us what you do.
We do education. We work with Hawaii Family Forum which is the c3 affiliated with Focus.
And we teach the community about how the legislature works, how churches are actually free under
the internal revenue code to participate in a wide range of political activity, and why
Christians need to be involved in the political thing. And then we also want our own new electioneering
which is what we did in the 20-12 election and what we're looking forward to 20-14.
We're hoping that we can flip enough house seats to have the conservatives in control of the
House so that this crazy legislative nonsense can be stopped. With what's been going on
in the special session there is a huge opportunity for some conservative House members to take
on the Senate -- current Senators and based on the issue that we're dealing with right
now, hopefully replace them as well. And so we'll have some change -- your know our Senate
is 25 members and there's one Republican and 24 Democrats. There are conservative
Democrats but four voted against same-sex marriage on this special session.
Well I appreciate the work you do there and we're happy to work with you and I appreciate
you taking time to share with us. I know you've got to get off to the Senate now.
Yeah and thank you very much.
Alright, thanks again. And thank you for watching. We do appreciate your sharing with us each
week here on the CitizenLink Report. You may always write to us at Mail@CitizenLink dot com
If you'd like to learn more about Hawaii Family Advocates you can just drop by their website
Hawaii Family Advocates dot org. I just wanted to give that website one more time. We encourage
you to pray for the people of Hawaii as they navigate through this difficult time for the
institution of marriage. Pray that they have wisdom and insight and can make the proper
changes in their state to keep marriage the way marriage ought to be.
And Remember: Stand Tall and Be Heard!