JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Jackson County Republican Party on Monday ruled a motion to censure Missouri state Rep. Chris Sander out of order.
However, the party is forming a committee to consider potentially censuring the Lone Jack Republican lawmaker in the future, Sander told The Kansas City Star Monday evening.
“I think I’m doing the right thing,” Sander said. “If the party is lagging behind me, I need to be patient. But I have no patience, so I will continue trying to move forward.”
The county Republican Party was considering censuring Sander, an openly gay Republican state lawmaker, for filing a proposed constitutional amendment that would redefine marriage in the Missouri Constitution from being between “a man and a woman” to “two individuals.”
The Star was removed from a livestream of the meeting before it began.
Jackson County GOP Chair Mark Anthony Jones, who also serves as the spokesperson for the party, said in a text to The Star that censuring members was not within the committee’s purview.
“This resolution was dead on arrival,” the text said.
Jones, who was first elected party chair in 2014, touts himself as the first openly gay elected Republican county committee chairman in the country, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The party considered Sander’s censure at a meeting at Tiff N Jay’s in Lee’s Summit. The resolution, filed by party committee member Dave Thomas from Grandview, also states that any member of the party could be censured for trying to define marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman.
“Marriage is valid as defined only between one man and one woman according to nature and nature’s God, and this truth is held by us to be self-evident and unalienable,” Thomas’ resolution said in part.
Missouri voters passed a constitutional amendment that barred same-sex marriage in 2004. That amendment was nullified in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned statewide bans on same-sex marriage nationwide.
Sander’s proposed constitutional amendment would bring Missouri in line with the federal Respect for Marriage Act signed by President Joe Biden late last year that enshrined same-sex and interracial marriage into federal law.
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