The second death of LGBT workplace protection in Nebraska

Also: Westboro Baptist church's claim that its freedom of speech was being abridged in Nebraska is rejected by a federal judge in Omaha.



     Adam Morfeld, who introduced his LB586 again this year, knew what he was up against Tuesday when he vowed, during a lunch rally for supporters in the capitol rotunda, to be back again and again if things didn't work out this session. They didn't; the bill was bracketed (tabled) on a 26-18 vote until April, when it likely won't be revisited. The vote was 26-18.

     On his way to helping kill LB586 again, GOP loose canon Bill Kintner let loose again, inviting LGBTs to vamoose if they didn't like attitudes in the Cornhusker State:

Senators Kintner (l) and Chambers

When I go to San Francisco, sometimes I’ve seen some pretty weird things there. And I’m not that comfortable in San Francisco. But you know the difference between conservatives and my friends on the left? When I’m not comfortable someplace I leave. I go somewhere I am comfortable, I move to the state I am comfortable, I like it.

     Ernie Chambers, the Unicameral's only Black and only Atheist and outspoken defender of the state's LGBT community, wasn't in the chamber at the time, but he was listening to the proceedings. When he got back on the floor, he had this to say:

If I was up here, I'd probably pick these books up and start throwing them around. If I was a white guy, I'd get my semi-automatic weapon and come down here and mow everybody down.

     This caused Kintner to ask the Speaker to spank Chambers, who has been in the Unicameral for nearly 40 years, not counting a term-limit timeout. Instead, eyes were rolled.

     Visible on camera behind the next speaker, Morfeld seemed clearly pissed and disheartened; there was talk that he would exact a little amendment revenge on the principal architects of his bill's demise.
     Multiple autopsies of LB586 can be read and viewed here, here, here and here.
     Of special note were the casual lies spun by Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, who recently attended his sister Laura's gay wedding in Illinois. He said this regarding LGBT employment protections in Nebraska:

I think that we've got law in Nebraska that already takes care of this so it's unnecessary and again... we've got current law that already covers it.

     This was complete bullshit, uttered with what must be absolute contempt for the intelligence of the electorate by Gov. Ricketts, a wealthy scion of the TD Ameritrade fortune, whose current office was purchased for him for $200,000 worth of attack ads paid for by dad Joe against opponent Jon Bruning, enabling a victory by his son of  fewer than 2,200 votes in the 2014 Nebraska GOP primary.

     State Senator Lydia Brasch birthed a whopper too, telling fellow senators that federal civil rights law made a Nebraska LGBT workplace protection unnecessary. Here is Brasch, doing what she does best.
     The following 26 senators voted to drive a stake through the heart of LGBT employment protections: Bloomfield, Brasch, Craighead, Davis, Ebke, Friesen, Garrett, Groene, Hilkemann, Hughes, Johnson, Kintner, Kolterman, Krist, Kuehn, McCoy, Murante, Riepe, Scheer, Schnoor, Seiler, Smith, Stinner, Sullivan, Watermeier, and Williams.
     Eighteen senators voted not to bracket the legisation: Baker, Bolz, Campbell, Chambers, Coash, Cook, Crawford, Gloor, K. Haar, Hadley, B. Harr, Howard, Kolowski, Larson, McCollister, Mello, Morfeld, Pansing Brooks.