The UW-Madison College Democrats invited state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, to speak at their meeting Wednesday night about his proposal to limit the effects of the gay marriage ban in the state.
The meeting, run by the chair of the UW-Madison College Democrats, Eli Lewien, began by highlighting the success of voter turnout in Madison. Lewien said that there was a ""sixty-six percent increase in on-campus voting and 85 percent of student votes on the Madison campus were against the ban.""
Erpenbach began by highlighting what he perceived as the lack of necessity for the ban.
""Gay marriage, before the amendment, was illegal in the state of Wisconsin. And what the amendment did was to make it really, really illegal,"" Erpenbach said. Additionally, Erpenbach said passing the ban was the ""stupidest thing"" the state could ever have done, echoed by applause from the crowd.
Erpenbach proposed an alteration to the gay marriage amendment that would outlaw discrimination in the state constitution itself.
Erpenbach said after researching the state constitution, he and his associates found that the word discrimination is not mentioned anywhere. Erpenbach said his main goal is to define discrimination in the constitution as it pertains to race, gender, religion, age and sexual orientation.
He said he hopes that if this passes and is indeed an amendment to the Constitution, that it will limit effects of the ban, allowing people to enter into a civil unions.
Erpenbach said he felt that people who could not enter into a civil union were being treated as second-class citizens. He proposed to take out the second part of the gay marriage amendment concerning civil unions because he said those affected would be missing out on two hundred or more marriage benefits.
Lewien and the rest of the College Democrats said they were hopeful that Erpenbach's proposal would pass and give civil unions to same-sex couples. Adam Lang, a senior at UW-Madison, said he agreed with Erpenbach, saying that he would like to see ""equal rights for everyone.""
Lang said he is bothered by the potential opposition, who he thinks will see the senator's plan as ""just a failed attempt to legalize gay marriage.""
Lang said though he is excited about the potential amendment, he thinks that there are too many districts to win nationally, but hopes that if each state individually passed similar amendments there could soon be equal rights for everyone.
