Rockway Institute In the News

Assembly panel passes marriage bill  April 12, 2007 By Matthew S. Bajko

A bill to allow same-sex couples to wed passed its first legislative test in Sacramento Tuesday, April 10 when the Assembly Judiciary Committee approved it on a party line 7-3 vote.

Despite assurances from the bill's author that he has enough votes to guarantee passage by the Legislature, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already announced he intends to veto the bill, as he did two years ago to similar legislation.

The legislative stalemate will likely be resolved by the state Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on six consolidated cases dealing with the state's anti-gay marriage laws in 2008. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and lawyers representing nearly two dozen same-sex couples, filed briefs with the court earlier this month urging the justices to allow gay couples to wed.

In the end, voters will likely have the final say in the matter. Opponents of same-sex marriage have threatened to place a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot. While many voters support marriage equality, polls continue to show that the majority of Californians do not. Last month a Field Poll found that only 43 percent of Californians support gay marriage.

At the hearing Tuesday, all of the committee's Democrats, including openly gay John Laird of Santa Cruz, and Bay Area members Sally Lieber of Mountain View and Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa, voted in favor of the legislation, AB43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, introduced last December by openly gay Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The bill would make the state's marriage laws gender neutral and allow religious leaders who oppose same-sex marriage to decline to perform marriage ceremonies for gay men and lesbians.

It would not overrule a state measure voters passed in 2000, Proposition 22, that restricts the state from legally recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states. Twenty-nine Assembly members and 14 senators, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and Speaker Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland), have signed on as co-authors of the bill.

"Our march toward marriage equality continues with another victory today," said Leno after the vote. "We will not stop until all citizens are afforded their constitutional right to marry the person they love and raise their families with the respect, dignity and validation which are their birthright."

Dr. Kate O'Hanlan, past president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, noted that the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in California, and the American Psychological Association have all "reviewed the research and issued policy statements endorsing equal access to civil marriage."

"Research tells us that it is always damaging to experience differential treatment by the laws of your state, conveying that this state holds you, your child, your parents in lower regard than the rest; branding you for social victimization, isolation, depression, and increased suicidality," testified O'Hanlan, a fellow at the Rockway Institute, a San Francisco LGBT think tank. "Medical science is unambiguous and unanimous in endorsing absolute equality of homosexuals, including marriage equality, for the betterment and health of all Americans."

Leno introduced a similar bill for the first time three years ago, but pulled it when it became clear he did not have enough votes to get it passed by the full Legislature. In 2005 he muscled up enough votes from his Democratic colleagues by using a bait and switch tactic to revive the bill in the Senate after it failed to receive enough votes in the Assembly.

The maneuver proved successful but Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill.

Prior to the committee's vote Tuesday, Nunez's press secretary Richard Stapler, writing on a Web site focused on California politics, urged the governor to sign the bill so that he and his partner could marry at Disneyland, which announced last week it would now allow same-sex couples to hold their ceremonies at the theme park.

"I am truly looking forward to the governor's signing ceremony. I've been to a few of his ceremonies myself, and let me tell you, his folks do a knock-up job of really setting the scene. So, how about it, Governor? Sign AB 43 – won't the Disney castle look fantastic in the background?" wrote Stapler.