TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on same-sex marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia complained in his dissent that the ruling would unleash a wave of litigation at the state level.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

Scalia is wrong about a lot of things, but he was prescient in this case.

And the wave hit Indiana a few days ago when four Indiana couples filed suit challenging Indiana’s legal ban on same-sex marriages. The suit filed in federal court argues that Indiana’s ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process.

The filing produced harrumphs from social conservatives who had fought to amend Indiana’s constitution to ban same-sex unions and some handwringing among advocates for equal rights for gay Hoosiers who worried that the suit was poorly timed.

The truth is that, for several reasons, the quicker the issue of same-sex marriage at the state level can be put in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for final resolution, the better.

The first reason is that the nation’s highest court can spare states many nasty family battles. Indiana just emerged from an ugly fight that pitted Hoosier against Hoosier for weeks over House Joint Resolution 3, the proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay unions. That fight produced bitterness and hard feelings that likely will linger for years.

The tragedy of it is that the whole fight was pointless. Indiana has a ban on the books already – the one that this suit challenges – and adding a state constitutional amendment wouldn’t have created any additional defense to a challenge in federal court.

One way or the other, this challenge was coming. We Hoosiers tore into each other for no good reason.

The second reason the Supreme Court needs to deal with this is that it will prevent states from descending into absurdity.

A federal court ruled a few weeks ago that Kentucky – which has a state constitutional ban with language virtually identical to Indiana’s proposed ban – could not refuse to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states. The court didn’t rule on the constitutionality of Kentucky’s ban – the judge is weighing that now – and that left the state in a strange position.

If that federal ruling stands and the state’s constitutional amendment remains in place, Kentucky will grant more rights to people who have left or who have come to the Bluegrass state from other places than it does to lifelong residents.

That’s untenable.

The third and most compelling reason the issue of same-sex marriage needs to go before the Supreme Court is that it is unfinished business. Only the nation’s highest court can settle this national argument and it needs to do so quickly.

We learned that much from the court’s ruling last summer. In the majority opinion, the court said that the U.S. ban on same-sex unions created insurmountable Fifth Amendment problems.

That raised a question that the court at the time refused to answer: If a federal ban on same-sex marriages violates the Bill of Rights, wouldn’t state bans do the same?

Scalia didn’t like the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage for not particularly judicial reasons. He whined in his dissent that the fact he doesn’t like the idea of gay people being together doesn’t mean that people should think he’s a bigot.

But in one important sense he was right.

The ruling created more questions than it answered. It encouraged citizens of many states, including Indiana, to go at each others’ throats. And it virtually begged for lawsuits like the one just filed here in Indiana.

The Supreme Court should have settled the issue of same-sex marriage last summer, but it didn’t.

The nation’s highest court should do so now.

It’s time for the nine Supreme Court justices – the only nine votes that really count now when it comes to same-sex marriage – to do their jobs.

It’s time for them to lay down the law on same-sex marriage.

It’s time for them to end this fight.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz
IndyPoltics.Org

In the past week I have had to deal with stories where a north central Indiana Tea Party “leader” used a tamale reference with

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org.

regards to a Hispanic State lawmaker. A white Indianapolis restaurant owner dresses in blackface as part of New Orleans-themed Fat Tuesday celebration. And in Bedford at a high school semi-final basketball game where the locals are facing a predominantly black school from Indianapolis, as part of the festivities some of the students come out in safari garb chasing gorillas.

For those of you who get it I will let all that sink in for just a moment.

Yes, in 21^st-century America this type of nonsense still takes place, but what was even more ridiculous was that even when these folks got called on the carpet in social media they can’t grasp the fact that they might have done something inappropriate.

Now, before someone tries to accuse me of being hypersensitive, let me put all that to rest. One of my favorite films is Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” That should clearly demonstrate that I not only have a pretty good sense of humor, but I also don’t offend easy.

Now, back to the topic at hand.

Like I said, I do not offend easy and do think there are plenty of times where people look for race when it is really not an issue. I can tell you a ton of stories from my college days in which black students who did poorly tried to accuse the professor of being prejudiced, when in fact the only real bias the instructors had was against laziness and poor work. I also think a person can have an issue with President Barack Obama, but that does not mean he or she is going home at night, taking the sheets off the bed, cutting two holes in them and then heading off to the local cross burning.

But seriously, dressing up in blackface and putting on gorilla costumes when the black basketball team comes to town? Really? And then you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong? That to me is the bigger sin in all these controversies. Everyone is entitled to exercise some bad judgment on occasion. However, when it is pointed out, the very least a person can do is pull a “my bad” and not do it again. There is no need to call the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, but there is a need for people to be more aware of the world around them.

Face it, folks, as much as some people may not like it, America is a lot more brown and black than it used to be. And that’s a good thing. It shows that as a country we can grow and evolve over time and celebrate our diversity while still maintaining our universal values of freedom and liberty. However, that only works when we don’t do stupid things like use tamale references when talking about a Hispanic lawmaker.

That type of behavior doesn’t get you anywhere. The only thing it gets you is called out because at the end of the day you look like either a racist or an idiot and neither is a very good option.

Abdul is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org. He is also a frequent contributor to numerous Indiana media outlets. He can be reached at abdul@indypolitics.org.

By Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

Lesley Weidenbener, managing editor, TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s easy to understand the outrage.

The mere mention of guns and schools conjures images of Sandy Hook and Columbine, only two of the far too many times that students have died at the hands of shooters invading schools with weapons.

But an issue as important as gun control deserves a rational debate, one that calls for all sides to be reasonable and realistic. And so should be the case as lawmakers decide whether it should be legal to leave a gun in a parked car on school grounds.

So often, it’s advocates of gun control calling on gun rights supporters to be reasonable. It’s not hard to criticize the National Rifle Association or some especially ardent gun lovers for failing to support what many Americans would likely say are reasonable policies about waiting periods for gun purchases or the size of magazines.

But rationality is required from all sides.

Some educators and gun rights advocates are incensed that the General Assembly is debating Senate Bill 229, which – in its current form – allows individuals to have guns in their cars when parked at a school. The frustration is easy to understand. But there’s a reasonable case to be made that this is an area for compromise – or a decision that should be made in local communities.

As passed by the House, SB 229 would require those who can legally possess a firearm to keep it in a trunk, a glove compartment or stored otherwise out of plain sight in a locked vehicle. Currently, that’s illegal and a violation of the law is a Class D felony.

A group of educators and child advocates have written to lawmakers complaining the bill “completely decriminalizes possession of a firearm, by anyone other than an enrolled student, in the parking lots of schools, day cares, preschools, residential child care facilities, and Head Start programs.”

“These are not the areas where we want our children to grab a shiny gun as a toy, take a gun to settle a dispute, or be in the line of fire,” the letter says.

Supporters of the legislation, though, say the current law too easily makes criminals out of people who lawfully keep weapons in their cars for protection or other activities and then need to stop at a school to talk with a child’s teacher or drop off some forgotten lunch or homework.

I can sympathize with the latter point. I’m not a parent. I don’t park at schools regularly to talk to teachers. I don’t carry a gun. I certainly have no need to have a weapon with me in my car. But I am originally from a part of the state in which none of these things are unusual.

In the smaller Southern Indiana community where I grew up, hunting is part of the culture. My dad taught me to shoot rifles and shotguns when I was young. In high school, I went rabbit hunting with a 410 single barrel shotgun my dad borrowed from a friend. My dad and I fished for years at the Vincennes Gun Club and my first job was scoring trap shooting at that same club.

There was nothing unusual, dangerous or violent about someone driving around town with a shotgun in his vehicle. I have no doubt that throughout my K-12 career, hundreds if not thousands of parents parked outside my school with guns in their cars and trucks. And just a few miles away, the parking lots of our county schools were lined with pickup trucks with gun racks.

Today, that’s probably somewhat less common. But hunting and shooting remain a common part of everyday life in rural Indiana.

I, however, have moved. I now live in an inner city Indianapolis neighborhood. No one I know carries a firearm in his car. In general, my neighbors don’t hunt. They don’t shoot for sport. In the place I live now, guns are far more associated with violent crimes than they are sport. Here, guns are not a part of my life or the lives of the people around me – except for the tragic stories we watch on the evening news.

It’s easy here to imagine that restrictions on guns in cars at schools are not just reasonable but responsible.

But in the more rural areas of our state, requiring people to remove firearms from their vehicles before they park at a school may not only be unreasonable but just unnecessary.

That doesn’t mean educators and gun control advocates haven’t raised some legitimate issues with the legislation. It seems sensible to clarify that guns are banned on school buses (whether they are owned by the district or by the driver) and there are arguments to be had about whether teachers should be allowed to park regularly at a school with a weapon in a locked in the car – something students would likely learn about quickly.

But the larger question may be whether these decisions might best be made locally – by school board members who answer to the people in their communities. Perhaps state law shouldn’t ban guns from school parking lots and neither should it insist they be allowed.

Local control might be the most reasonable option of all.

Lesley Weidenbener is executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.