Maryland

by Jeremy Leaming

Though leaders of the Maryland Senate have delayed consideration of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s marriage equality bill, The Washington Post reports the measure is still expected to pass the chamber and reach the governor by week’s end.

The Senate’s Minority Whip Edward R. Reilly (R-Anne Arundel), the newspaper reports, obtained the delay so amendments to the equality measure could be prepared. Senate President Thomas Miller Jr. said he expects the measure to pass the Senate, as it did last year.

O’Malley (pictured) is pushing hard to add Maryland to the list of states that have legalized same-sex marriage. Following last week’s approval of the measure by the Maryland House of Delegates, the governor said “we’re prepared to redouble our efforts” as the Senate considers the measure.

“The common thread,” he continued, “running through our efforts together in Maryland is the thread of human dignity; the dignity of work, the dignity of faith, the dignity of family, the dignity of every individual.”

As in Washington, where Gov. Chris Gregoire recently enacted marriage equality legislation, Christian evangelical lobbyists in Maryland are vowing to drag marriage equality before voters, if need be.

The Maryland Marriage Alliance, representing a gaggle of Christian evangelical interests, is loudly arguing that marriage must remain exclusive to men and women. In a missive on the group’s website, it claims that houses of worship that refuse to conduct weddings for gays and lesbians will place their tax benefits in jeopardy. Maryland’s equality bill, however, contains and exemption for houses of worship, much like the one that passed last year in New York. The Md. bill explicitly states that houses of worship, which receive generous government tax benefits, can play be different rules, and discriminate against gays and lesbians if they wish.

by Jeremy Leaming

Advocates for repealing the death penalty say there are hopeful signs that 2012 will see great progress toward their goal, Politico reports.

Efforts are underway in California, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland and Connecticut to dump the use of the death penalty. Politico notes, “Advocates say the coming year could be their best opportunity yet to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole in these states, pointing to shifts in public opinion, rising concern over execution costs, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s recent decision to place a moratorium on capital punishment, and Troy Davis’s high-profile execution galvanizing opposition to the death penalty.”

Diann Rust-Tierney, head of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told Politico that Davis’s case helped spark greater attention to how states employ capital punishment. “That was a sad but stark example to folks of how broken the system is,” Rust-Tierney said.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said, “Any of those [state efforts] could succeed, but they’re all teed up for this coming year."

As Politico notes, the SAFE California Campaign, which is working to place an initiative before voters next year to abolish the death penalty, has cited the enormous costs – in the billions – of carrying out the death penalty in a state burdened with significant budgetary woes .  

In a Dec. 2 guest post for ACSblog, Andrew Love, a death penalty lawyer in California, noted, “A study released by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon found that California’s death penalty system is currently costing the state about $184 million per year. Further, ‘since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions.'"