Yes, it's 2013 and some states are still having these debates. The bill passed yesterday now makes its way to the Governor's desk for signing.
via KXLH, Helena.
On Tuesday, Montana's LGBT community saw a major victory on the House floor as lawmakers passed a bill which decriminalizes homosexuality.
Senate Bill 107 strikes language from Montana law which makes it illegal to have homosexual sex. In a 64 to 36 vote some Republicans joined Democrats in voting to take the language out of Montana code.
At least one Republican explained his bigotry and his vote in this way, that though he "has a whole lot of love and respect for his many homosexual friends", what they do is deviate or deviant.
Representative Dave Hagstrom (R-Billings) says homosexual sex is deviate.
"To me sex is primarily purposed to produce people," Hagstrom explained. "Sex that doesn't produce people is deviate. That doesn't mean it's a problem, it just means it's not doing its primary purpose."
Hagstrom and thirty-seven (37) other Republicans voted to keep the law on the books (which carried penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine -and no, I'm not kidding). Twenty-five Republicans had the good sense to get rid of this antiquated law.
The stance of the others didn't sit well, with one legislator saying she wanted to punch one of them:
"If we abandon our moral compass, we will lose our country," Kerns warned. "It's a simple as that." Kerns implied that LGBT Montanans lacked "moral character."
Kerns' stance, and the fact that 38 Republicans effectively voted to keep gay sex a felony, incensed Rep. Amanda Curtis (D-Butte).
"It was so hard to sit through that and not walk across the floor and punch him," Curtis said of Kerns in a video uploaded on YouTube. "That's so offensive. Talk about starting a fight."
"...To say that our friends and our neighbors and our brothers and sisters and our cousins, aunts and uncles should be felons, and we support this because the Bible says so?... It's wrong," Curtis railed, accusing two of the Republican lawmakers who oppose the bill of "promoting hate."
