WYOMING: Dueling Marriage Bills Lose

Yesterday the Wyoming House voted down bills on both sides of the marriage equality issue.

The House first defeated a bill that would have changed state law to allow same-sex marriages. Later, it defeated another bill that would have specified that that Wyoming wouldn't recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Rep. Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie, sponsored the bill to permit same-sex marriages. The bill would have removed the state's current legal specification that marriage is a civil contract between a man and a woman. Connolly, a lesbian and a professor at the University of Wyoming, said that the federal government now recognizes all marriages, whether they're between people of different sexes or the same sex.

Wyoming does not have a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and is one of nine remaining states not currently facing a marriage lawsuit.