2014 MT Senate debate: on Civil Rights

Amanda Curtis: Outspoken advocate for labor unions and women's rights

First-term state Rep. Amanda Curtis, 34, is a high school math teacher in Butte who won the endorsements of Montana's teachers union for her opposition to charter schools as well as the Montana Sportsmen Alliance before Saturday's party convention in Helena. Democrats are hoping her outspoken support for labor unions and women's rights will energize the campaign against U.S. Rep. Steve Daines.

Curtis sponsored several bills that didn't make it through Montana's Republican-controlled statehouse. Among them was legislation to increase the mandatory percentage of Montana workers hired for state public works projects. Contractors, especially in the energy industry, opposed the measure.

Champ Edmunds: Government shouldn't redefine marriage

Edmunds: Strongly Agree

John Walsh: Voted against NAACP staffer's appointment to Dept.of Justice

Debo P. Adegbile's office, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, represented Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black Philadelphia journalist accused of murdering a police officer. They proved that Abu-Jamal's death sentence violated the United States Constitution. They saved his life as his sentence was reduced to life without possibility of parole.

For his work, which was in the tradition of John Adams, the U.S. Senate denied Adegbile's appointment to be head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. He lost by three votes. Sen. John Walsh cast one of those votes.

If courage is to be the centerpiece of Walsh's campaign, then he should demonstrate it on the floor of the Senate.

Amanda Curtis: Repeal state ban on sodomy; make gay sex legal

"The good news," according to Curtis, is that that the bill--designed to repeal a law that targets gay individuals--will move forward in the state House after a 60-38 vote. "The bad news is that there are 38 people in the House who think that's how their district wants them to vote, or they are not listening to their district and believe so strongly that gays should be felons that they have a moral obligation to keep it that way."

Curtis said it was hard for her to hold herself back from walking "across the floor" during debate on the bill in order to "punch" her colleague, state Rep. Krayton Kerns, who "insinuated that if you are gay you do not have a moral character." In 1997, the state Supreme Court ruled that the 40-year-old ban on sodomy was unconstitutional, but the state legislature has yet to repeal the statute.