Marc Felion of FeastForFun.com catches Wisconsin’s Lt. Governor candidate Rebecca Kleefisch in an unusual explanation for why gays and lesbians should be denied the right to marry. “We just don’t have the money to be giving out for extra benefits right now,” Kleefisch told WITI-TV’s ‘Real Milwaukee’ program, “It’s a fiscal back breaker”:
KLEEFISCH: I voted that way, I’m against gay marriage as well. I think that especially when it comes to $3 billion budget and it’s climbing. The legislative fiscal bureau announced about five days ago that we are actually $265 million dollars further in the hole than we expected to be this year. We just don’t have the money to be giving out for extra benefits right now. It’s a fiscal back breaker.
Watch it:
Kleefisch has made this argument before. “This doesn’t just have roots in the Bible, this has roots and fiscal common sense. We can’t at this point, afford to just be handing out money to anyone,” she said during an interview with WVCY radio. “This is a slippery slope in addition to that at what point are we going to okay marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this clock, can we marry dogs?”
Of course Kleefisch is wrong in her budgetary projections. As the Williams Institute has argued, allowing gay people to marry would actually boost state economies.
Update
Mike Jones points out just how archaic the Wisconsin anti same-sex marriage law is:
As Maia Spotts wrote on Change.org earlier this year, Wisconsin law is somewhere between terrible and reprehensible on the subject of equality. She noted a statute in the law, 765.30(1)(a) of the Wisconsin code, that criminalized anyone in the state of Wisconsin who participated in a same-sex marriage anywhere in the world.
The statute reads: “Any person residing and intending to continue to reside in this state who goes outside the state and there contracts a marriage prohibited or declared void under the laws of this state” can be fined up to $10,000 or imprisoned for up to 9 months, or both. That’s right, solely for loving someone of the same gender and traveling to a place like Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut, D.C., Vermont or New Hampshire where same-sex marriage is legal, a Wisconsin gay person could be thrown in jail or fined.
Update
,Kleefisch has apologized “for my poor choice of words”:
“My comments were meant to relay my concern with redefining marriage,” she said. “I never intended to sound insensitive, and have the utmost respect for all people.”
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