Things happen so fast these days it is difficult to keep up.

There was a coronavirus aid bill passed last week, and Arizona's Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko voted against it.

Biggs told an interviewer that he didn't like the way the bill "redefined" family.

Bill aims to help people through this

I suppose I can understand, if not appreciate, Biggs’ opposition to same-sex relationships. He’s been fighting against giving same-sex couples the right to form civil unions or marriages or anything that he recognized by the law for many years.

But this isn’t like any of those years.

None of us has faced anything like the coronavirus crisis before. A situation that not only threatens lives, but livelihoods, and on a scale that would have seems unimaginable only a few months ago.

So Congress and President Donald Trump are finally taking action, trying to cobble together an economic package that recognizes and provides some assistance for those who will struggle to get through the changes forced upon us by the coronavirus pandemic.

Biggs and Rep. Debbie Lesko voted against it.

Redefining 'family' or callousness?

Biggs said he voted against the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) because there are provisions within the bill, which passed overwhelmingly, that offer assistance to domestic partnerships, and because some of those partnerships are same-sex couples.

When he was in the Arizona Legislature, Biggs did more than his share of carrying water for Cathi Herrod and the Center for Arizona Policy, the notoriously anti-LGBTQ lobbying and advocacy organization. Lesko hasn't exactly been a friend of the LGBTQ community either.

The aid bill covers “any such relationship between 2 individuals that is granted legal recognition by a State or political subdivision of a State as a marriage or analogous relationship, including a civil union or domestic partnership.”

Biggs explained it this way, "They've redefined family for the first time in a piece of federal legislation to include committed relationships. The problem with that, of course, is it's really hard to define a committed relationship and it's really hard to define anything related to that and so they've tried to — they've put in, in my opinion — sort of an amorphous definition. But that leaves it wide open and then they expand it, expand on that."

A time for real 'family values'

What Biggs hasn’t seemed to grasp is that the idea of what constitutes a family HAS been redefined.

It’s done. The Supreme Court tossed out laws banning same-sex marriage in 2015.

And the coronavirus aid bill defined “committed relationship” as being “between two individuals, each at least 18 years of age, in which each individual is the other individual's sole domestic partner and both individuals share responsibility for a significant measure of each other's common welfare.”

A no vote by Biggs and Lesko on legislation that would help people in such relationships during time of national crisis goes against our national values. And, more importantly, our family values.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.