Winning Arguments: Hawaii Lawmakers’ Speeches on Gay Marriage
After doing a lot of listening over the past two weeks, Hawaii lawmakers did a lot of talking about marriage equality.
Senate and House committees heard nearly 70 hours of testimony and received almost 25,000 letters for and against legislation to legalize gay marriage.
But before both chambers passed , which Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law Wednesday, most of the lawmakers took the opportunity to make grand speeches on the floor.
Here’s a look at five of those, presented with word clouds that highlight the most frequently used words. Links to the full speeches are also provided.
We picked Reps. Tom Brower, Chris Lee and Kaniela Ing and Sens. Jill Tokuda and Gil Kahele somewhat at random, but also because their speeches encompassed so much. They were at times hilarious and well-written, illustrative of a common argument and exemplifying an understated one.
Rep. Tom Brower’s SB 1 floor speech in a word cloud.
Brower, a self-described street rapper turned songwriter, woke up the crowd with his oratory prowess on the floor of the House, Nov. 8. Almost every line was another soundbite or Tweet.
“As a long-time resident of Waikiki, I’ve met people who are gay, quasi-gay, gay-sian, bisexual, metro-sexual, pansexual, hetero-flexible, faafafine, transgendered, androgynous, mahu and a granny who was a tranny.”
And then there was Brower’s out-loud wondering of what to call a legal union between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, if not marriage.
“What are we going name it? ‘I can’t believe it’s not marriage.’ Or marriage with an asterisk, or marriage in quotation marks, or marriage wink-wink, or hashtag marriage.”
Read Brower’s full speech .
Sen. Jill Tokuda’s SB 1 floor speech in a word cloud.
What Tokuda’s Nov. 12 floor speech lacked in Broweresque pizzazz it made up for in sheer eloquence.
“With the benefit of hindsight only history can afford us, we know that we are indeed at a crossroads, positioned in that proverbial time that John F. Kennedy referenced in his book Profiles in Courage as ‘the lag between our way of thought and our way of life.’
“At so many of these points in our past, it was not the majority or popular vote that righted the wrongs and corrected the injustices. It was leaders who did not merely listen to whose cries were the loudest or petitions the longest, judges and lawmakers who with their pens and collective votes were asked to exhibit great courage on behalf of the disenfranchised and minority voice.”
Sen. Clayton Hee recognized Tokuda during the bill-signing ceremony for speaking as a mother and bringing humanity to the issue.
Read her full speech .
Sen. Gil Kahele’s SB 1 floor speech in a word cloud.
Kahele, one of only six Native Hawaiians serving in the Legislature, opened his Nov. 12 floor speech with a history lesson on “ai kane,” a class of people attached to the high chiefs who served as social, sexual and political intermediaries.
“Same-sex relationships are part of the very fabric of the Hawaiian people, my ancestors and history,” he said. “Only after western contact, the arrival of the missionaries in 1820 and the fall of the kapu system did the ai kane become an outcast in their own land.”
Kahele also recalled his experiences as a young Marine stationed in the South in the 1960s.
“Restaurants, bathrooms and waiting areas at the bus terminals were all segregated,” he said. “Signs that read ‘Whites Only’ were commonplace and I didn’t know at the time if that included me.”
Read Kahele’s full speech .
Rep. Kaniela Ing’s SB 1 floor speech in a word cloud.
Ing, a freshman lawmaker, shared a very personal story in his Nov. 8 floor speech that shot down some of the recurring arguments gay-marriage opponents had their kids read as their public testimony on the bill.
“Please don’t write scripts for your kids to tell me children need a mother and a father in order to be raised right — when my father passed away when I was a young child, and just like our junior U.S. senator, and just like our Hawaii-born president of the United States, I come from a single-parent home,” he said.
Ing also challenged testifiers who asked House committee members if they would wish homosexuality on their own kids.
“If the gay lifestyle they speak of pertains to the highly successful physicians, attorneys, economists, the world-renowned microbiologists and psychologists that we’ve seen testify… If this gay lifestyle is the inspiringly committed couples who have been together for decades, yet are still viewed as strangers in the eyes of their government… If this gay lifestyle is boldly standing up in the face of hate to fight for equal rights for all… If that’s what the gay agenda will bring, if that’s how gay children will be like,” Ing said, “Then hey, sign me up. I’ll take three.”
Read his full speech .
Rep. Chris Lee’s SB 1 floor speech in a word cloud.
Lee, who spoke on behalf of the House at the bill-signing ceremony, talked about popularity in his Nov. 8 floor speech.
“Make no mistake; this is a hard issue but we are elected to make hard decisions and do the right thing knowing not everyone will approve,” he said. “When interracial marriage was legalized less than 50 years ago just 20 percent of the public approved of such relationship — 20 percent. But I wonder how people back then explain to their grandchildren today that opposing interracial marriage at the time was the right thing to do?”
Lee said it was time for Hawaii to advance civil liberties again.
“These social evolutions were not easy, and it is unfortunate that the great march toward justice and equality often divides before it unites, but pursuing freedom for all has been the right thing to do every time, and our society has healed and together we have grown stronger,” he said.
“Some day I am going to be the one answering to my grandchildren,” Lee said. “When they ask, I want to tell them I did the right thing.”
Read his full floor speech .
