Equality Arizona Executive Director Barbara McCullough-Jones has called on state Senate President Tim Bee to immediately form a bipartisan commission to investigate alleged illegal actions that took place on the Senate floor on the last day of this year’s session. McCullough-Jones contends that openly gay senators Paula Aboud and Ken Cheuvronts’ rights were violated during debate, allowing for Republican leadership to call for a vote on the controversial Arizona marriage amendment.

The request came after the state Senate Ethics Committee’s chairman, Jay Tibshraeny decided to defer the investigation to the full Senate Ethics Committee. Currently, the Ethics Committee consists of Tibshraeny and two other Republicans as well as two Democrats. Equality Arizona told the Associated Press they questioned whether this Republican-biased committee could rule fairly on the allegations.

In the five-page letter, McCullough-Jones cites audio, video and written transcripts of the hearing, which she says reveals that Senator Jack Harper, who was acting as the presiding officer at the time, wrongfully shut off the microphones of Aboud and Cheuvront in the middle of a debate. According to McCullough-Jones, Harper acknowledged his role in interrupting the debate and chose not to correct the situation.

“The people of Arizona deserve a complete and accurate account of what happened,” said McCullough-Jones. “These Senators must be held accountable for breaking the rules and disregarding our democratic process. A bipartisan investigation will help to ensure impartiality and transparency so that the people can be fully informed.”

Politics can get dirty. But Arizona state Senator Paula Aboud claims she’s never seen anything as filthy as the behavior she witnessed on the final day of the recent legislative session.

As the Senate prepared to vote on an anti-gay constitutional amendment putting a question on the ballot that would ban marriage equality, Aboud and another openly gay senator, Ken Cheuvront, had been consistently executing a three-month strategy to prevent the question from going to voters. The strategy: since Republicans needed all their members present to advance the amendment, Aboud and Cheuvront helped keep one Republican off of the floor each day of the session. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

However, on that last day, Aboud claims one Republican senator broke his promise to be absent. “That was the hardest part about what happened. We would not have had to go through the chaos that we did on the Senate floor if Sen. [Tom] O’Halleran would have kept his word,” Aboud said.

Upon realizing that O’Halleran was going to be present, Aboud and Cheuvront began to filibuster the bill. Knowing that the filibuster could legally and effectively kill their opportunity to vote, supporters of the marriage amendment decided that they would take whatever measure necessary to silence Aboud and Cheuvront.

“During the course of that filibuster, the Republicans went into panic mode and frantically went through the rule book, strategized and then realized that they had no legal recourse. That’s when they schemed and devised a plan that actually broke the Senate rules.”

Mid-debate, Republican leadership had Sen. Jack Harper shut off Cheuvront and Abouds’ microphones, and called on the Majority Leader Sen. Thayer Verschoor to bring the matter to a vote. Though opponents of the marriage amendment protested, the chair refused to acknowledge their points of order.

Feeling betrayed and cheated, Aboud called out to those who had violated her civil rights on the Senate floor, those who were seeking to further violate the rights of LGBT Arizonans. “I don’t think you’re afraid of judges. You’re afraid of me and my relationship.”

Read GayPolitics.com’s interview with Arizona State Senator Paula Aboud:

GP: What kind of a message does this violation of ethics present to your constituents?

PA: It’s not just the marriage amendment by itself, but the breach, the violation of the Rules of the Senate that has divided our Senate to a point where members don’t even know how they are going to face Republicans on the floor.

Personally, I will be working against those three Republican Senators [John Huppenthal – Dist. 20, Jack Harper – Dist. 3, Thayer Verschoor – Dist. 22] that committed the violation of our civil rights on the floor of the Senate by shutting off our microphones. I do not want to see their faces in the Senate again because they can no longer be trusted.

In fact, none of the Republicans, except Republican Sen. Carolyn Allen, who supported us, deserve to return to the Senate. They’ve broken our trust and they have broken the trust of the citizens of Arizona by violating our rights. If they’ve violated our rights once they’ll violate them again. They are here to protect the rights and interests of people of this state and here they are violating those very rules that govern our law-making body. It’s a travesty. They have dishonored the Senate.

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After a contentious debate, Arizona legislators approved a proposal calling for a ballot measure this November that would prohibit marriage equality in the state. Though marriage between two people of the same gender is already illegal in the state, those pushing the proposal argued that in light of recent “judicial activism,” a constitutional ban is required.

Openly lesbian Sen. Paula Aboud was not convinced by the argument, calling the rhetoric a “fraud.”

According to The Arizona Republic, Aboud told her colleagues:

“I don’t think you’re afraid of judges. You’re afraid of me and my relationship.”