Two bills limiting rights of Nebraska property owners introduced by State Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial

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Mark Christensen (Photo: Nebraska Unicameral)

The first, LB520, would legalize trespassing by surveyors, as Ben Gotschall sharply noted.
     The language of Christensen's bill would, for example, allow surveyors engaged by a pipeline or oil company — or anyone else — access to a farm or ranch without a permit and without the permission of the landowner.
     The second, LB335, would take away rights of business owners to restrict firearms on their property by authorizing visitors to conceal weapons in their vehicles in private parking lots open to the public — even allowing loaded assault rifles in the parking lots of day care centers or public schools.
     Christensen's bill also specifies situations in which business owners can be sued by people they have forbidden to bring weapons onto their property. His bill makes them responsible, in such situations, for the legal costs of the people suing them.

Oh, look — NE Sen. Mark Christensen has a sweater vest stand-in who isn't Rick Santorum (but could be)

This post is a follow-up to this one, if you're scratching your head.

(H/T: Kent Goertzen comment in Bold Nebraska's FB page)

Sen. Mark Christensen, of Imperial Nebraska, bravely protecting the Cornhusker State from the menace of granting legal ties to gay families

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ALSO: Christensen's two bills which limit the rights of Nebraska property owners.

Nebraska State Senator Mark Christensen, of Imperial (Dist. 44), has already made known his hostility to LB485, legislation which would extend employment and public accommodations protection to gay Nebraskans — he told Alissa Skelton in an AP story that he won't support the bill and he "suspects" there will be a filibuster if it makes it to the floor.
     “We have protections for things people can’t change like race,” he said. “Sexuality is a choice.”

Photo: Nebraska Unicameral

     AKSARBENT could run down the reasons why sexual orientation is NOT, for overwhelming numbers of gay and straight people, a "choice," but in 2013, people like Christensen, who exemplify the static cling of baseless, anachronistic stupidity, appear to be beyond the redemption of even the common sense of asking any five heteros or homos whether they "chose" their sexual orientation.
     At last week's LB380 hearing to allow second parent adoption, Christensen and fellow traveler Colby Coash tag teamed each other in raising hypothetical scenarios in which they suggested that Sara Howard's bill to allow second partner adoptions in Nebraska (which mostly affects straight couples and is long overdue) might place kids in the care of unmarried partners who don't live together, which is totally ridiculous.
     At one point Sen. Coash stepped far enough off the metaphorical curb to ask (with a straight face) if he and Christensen could adopt a kid. Sen. Sara Howard diplomatically disabused him of that notion (he lives with his wife, not Sen. Christensen), although it probably wasn't a genuine concern in the first place.
     When Mark Christensen was asked if he had anything to add, he said he wasn't going to "go there," amid hearty laughter mostly from the troglodyte faction of the Judiciary Committee hearing room.
     While kids with two moms or two dads may be a big joke to Senators Colby Coash and Mark Christensen, the legal needs of those kids — and the couples raising them — are not funny to the Sara Howards of this world, who are trying to ensure that such families get the legal protection in Nebraska that they deserve.

Mark Christensen:  mchristensen@leg.ne.gov — 402-471-2805
Colby Coash:  ccoash@leg.ne.gov — 402-471-2632

     Below is an example of the kids and the situations that Coash and Christensen evidently don't give a damn about.

LB380 video: NE State Sen. Colby Coash trolls Judiciary Committee, asks if he and Sen. Mark Christensen can adopt a kid together

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First Coash, BFF of Ted Nugent, asked Sen. Sara Howard, sponsor of LB380, which would allow second parent adoptions in Nebraska, this: "Could you and I adopt a baby?"
     At that point Howard patiently explained to Coash (who was choreographing his "confusion" with flailing hands) that the language of her bill requires compliance with statutory procedures required for adoption (living together, background check, home visit, etc.)
     Presumably, Coash could have read this in the bill before the hearing. Apparently he didn't, and also didn't pay attention to Howard's spoon-fed explanation either, because a few minutes later he reasked the question in an even more inanely provocative manner: "I'm not married to Sen. Mark Christensen either. Could we adopt a kid?"
     (Coash and Christensen sit next to each other at the Judiciary Committee, if that carries any weight.)
     Howard again explained: "You two would have to live together..."
     At this point it was crystal clear that Coash was grandstanding.
     It's sad that the voters of District 27, comprising a large swath of west, downtown and south Lincoln, whom Coash putatively represents, haven't yet dumped him at the ballot box in favor of a better steward of their interests in the Unicameral.

Nebraska senate debates LGBT rights: No, Senator Christensen, polygamy is not a sexual orientation

Coming video: Sen. Chambers asks a "former homosexual" if the sex he had back in the gay was enjoyable, causing the Christers in the hearing room to erupt in anger; when they did so a second time, Committee Chairman Brad Ashford threatened to clear the chamber. 

First, one of the two most hostile members of the Nebraska Judiciary Committee, Colby Coash (BFF of Ted Nugent), recited the trendy new talking points advanced by antigay Christians, about LGBT people not conforming to the definition of a protected class in the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and therefore not a fit group to be designated a protected class in today's thoroughly modern world.
     Senator Ernie Chambers patiently explained (for the obvious benefit of Coash) why the U.S. Civil Rights Act definitions need not and are not the controlling authority for classes that Nebraska is allowed to protect, to whit (emphasis added):

...Nobody could argue and be taken seriously that the legislature cannot not due what is being undertaken now.

     Following that, Sen. Mark Christensen, who represents District 44 and the NRA, was dumb enough to reiterate Sen. Coash's conflation of polygamy with various sexual orientations, (thinking apparently that he would score some points with the Bible thumpers), but LB485's sponsor, Danielle Conrad, efficiently dismissed Christensen's bizarre delusion.