A second Kansas lawmaker on Saturday said he wants to withdraw his name from a bill labeling same-sex marriage as a “parody” and five other related bills dealing with pornography, abortion and marriage.
Republican State Rep. Owen Donohoe is renouncing the same-sex marriage bill and several other pieces of legislation he sponsored that would have required anti-porn filters on new phones and computers, charged entry fees to strip clubs and made it harder to get divorced.
In a newsletter sent to his constituents Saturday, Donohoe said it was a mistake that he agreed to back the bills peddled to lawmakers by Chris Sevier, who became a household name at the Capitol after news of the bills broke a little more than a week ago. Donohoe’s complete statement is posted on his webpage.
“I’ve always been a supporter of religious liberty and religious freedom, and it was my understanding the bills dealt with those issues,” Donohoe wrote in his newsletter. “Obviously, that was not the case.”
Donohoe said he asked House leadership how he might remove his name from the legislation (House Bills 2318, 2319, 2320, 2321, 2322, 2323) but was told he would need approval of the entire House.
“The other party has been reluctant to provide this approval, as they like to use the issue in future elections,” Donohoe said.
“Thus, my other avenue is to inform my constituents via this statement that I was not aware Chris Sevier was the author of the bills,” he wrote.
Donohoe said he thought Republican state Rep. Randy Garber was sponsoring the legislation. Donohoe said he has known Garber for years and the Sabetha Republican had never expressed these viewpoints.
Donohoe said as soon as he learned of the bills’ contents, he met with the sponsor to tell him he wanted his name pulled from the legislation.
Donohoe could not be reached for comment late Saturday.
Donohoe’s reversal comes after Republican state Rep. Ron Highland apologized for supporting the bill that characterized same-sex marriage as a “parody.” The bill said sexual orientation was a myth and was part of the “religion of secular humanism.”
Advocates of LGBT rights called the bill “vile, hateful and disrespectful.”
Highland wrote a letter to his hometown paper apologizing for cosponsoring the bill after his daughter — who describes herself as a proud member of the LGBT community — posted a letter on Facebook criticizing her father. He said he asked for his name to be removed from the bill.
“The bill that I should not have signed on to cosponsor contained some hateful language, which I do not condone and it is against our Lord’s command to love our neighbors,” Highland said in a letter first reported by the Manhattan Mercury on Thursday.
“I trusted the author of the bill who is my office mate and signed on to several of his bills. Knowing that some of them were really important, I trusted that they all were, and that was not the case.
“I must admit it was a mistake, and apologize,” he said
Donohoe, meanwhile acknowledged, that he erred for not reading the bills before agreeing to sponsor them. He accepted responsibility for not exercising more diligence.
Donohoe said the circumstances of signing the bills were “most unusual.” He said he learned of the bills on the morning of Feb. 13 — the last day bills could be filed in committee.
Citing a series of previously scheduled meetings that day, Donohoe said he wasn’t able to read the legislation. At about 3 p.m., he was told the bills had to be turned in by 5 p.m.
With another meeting approaching at 3:30 p.m., Donohoe said he visited the bill sponsor’s office where several lawmakers who arrived before him were reading the legislation.
“So I signed them before my meeting. I did not have time to read them before I signed them,” he said in the newsletter.
“I signed these bills because I understood them to be about religious liberty, not the hateful things that were actually written in the bills,” he wrote. “I didn’t do my job properly, and I regret that.”
