Legislators Support Same-Sex Marriage

A California Assembly panel endorsed legalizing gay and lesbian marriages Tuesday, marking the first time that any legislative body in the U.S. has supported such marriages with a formal vote.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee approved a bill to grant full marriage rights to same sex-couples after a 90-minute hearing that included a gay couple with fidgety children, lesbians who had met on a blind date in 1973, social conservatives and a mother who had driven two hours with her family to condemn the action.

Although the bill is considered unlikely to advance and is expected to die this year, the committee vote marked a significant moment in the debate over homosexual marriage and made a statement about how far public opinion had moved.

“What we are looking at today is a union of two individuals,” said Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), author of the measure, “whether for a lifetime or not, whether to procreate or not, to share the joys, the challenges, the ups and downs and exhilarations of life together.”

A similar gay marriage bill was introduced in the California Legislature 13 years ago but died in the Assembly Judiciary Committee without receiving a single vote, and advocating civil unions and domestic partnerships was considered politically untenable only a few years ago.

But recent legal cases pending in the California and Massachusetts courts, a wave of gay and lesbian marriages in San Francisco and Oregon and the possibility of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages have given the issue national attention.

The leaders of California’s Assembly were under public pressure to support Leno’s bill and willing to give him a single public hearing. But in an election year, with focus on the state budget crisis, the bill is expected to die in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

As with almost every discussion in the Legislature over gays and lesbians, the hearing Tuesday took on moral tones amid a wide-ranging debate regarding equal protection under the law, the history of marriage, the Proposition 22 marriage initiative in 2000 and the bitter debate in 1948 over legalizing interracial marriages.

Families speaking against the Leno bill crossed paths in a crowded hearing room with gay and lesbian couples and their families.

About 50 people briefly approached the podium to declare support for the bill, while about a dozen spoke against it.

Kim Skeen, a 38-year-old mother from rural Calaveras County, said she had driven two hours with her children -- Ashley, Bethany, Nathan, Emily and Wesley, ages 2 to 16 -- to speak against the bill.

“I’m Emily and I vote no,” said the 6-year-old as she stood before the imposing Judiciary Committee dais.

“My name is Ashley Skeen, and I beg you, please, vote no,” said her 16-year-old sister.

“I got all my children up at 5, and we came,” Kim Skeen said, “because I feel that the sanctity of marriage should be preserved between a man and a woman and I feel very strongly that if this passes there is just no limit to what our country will do. The moral decline is so great, it’s going to affect my children, my grandchildren.”

Throughout the debate, the loud voice of 2-year-old Kenyon Symons-Rogers reverberated through the large hearing room. His adoptive parents, documentary filmmaker Johnny Symons and Berkeley public health expert William Rogers, struggled to control him as they spoke in favor of the measure.

“We appear to be an American family,” Rogers said. “We have been together for 11 years. We have a house together. We have two children who we adopted through the California foster care system. And we even drive a minivan. But we’re not treated as a family because we are not married.”

Several couples said they had been moved by the vote, but had felt even more emotion after being married in San Francisco, when Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered gender-neutral licenses to be issued.

The state Supreme Court ordered a halt to the marriages March 11, after more than 4,000 couples had been married in nearly a month. The validity of those marriages is to be decided in the courts.

Leno said he had officiated at more than 100 marriages in San Francisco, including one for Ellen Pontac and Shelly Bailes, both 62, who first met in 1973 in Long Island.

“We have always felt like second-class citizens,” Bailes said. “We have four kids and no one would rent to us because we were two women. We have felt discrimination for a very long time.”

The measure considered Tuesday, AB 1967, passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee in an 8-3 vote, with every Democrat on the panel supporting it and every Republican voting against it. Five members of the committee co-wrote the measure.

“With one ordinary committee vote, California sent an extraordinary message across the nation that only marriage provides full rights, responsibilities and benefits for same-sex couples and their families,” said Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, based in Washington, D.C.

Tuesday’s hearing, however, is likely to end the bulk of the debate on gay marriage legislation in California this year, barring any dramatic court decisions or a shift in thinking among Democratic leaders of the Assembly or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The governor has not taken a position on the bill and does not comment on pending legislation, an aide said. In his brief political career, Schwarzenegger has offered contradictory statements on the subject.

When asked in August whether he supported gay marriage, Schwarzenegger made a comic flub and said: “No, I do not. Gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Recent statements are more vague. He told Jay Leno that he would be “fine” with gay and lesbian marriages if “the people” or a court decided they were valid. Later, on “Meet the Press,” he declined to say whether he would veto Leno’s bill if it came to his desk.

Opponents of the bill said state voters had spoken in 2000 when they approved Proposition 22, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. They said Leno should instead offer another ballot initiative to legalize gay marriage instead of legislation that could overturn the will of California voters.

“Clearly, this is an attempt to invalidate that,” said Assemblyman Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach), who voted against the bill. “I would submit to you that you are going about it the wrong way.... Go put this on the ballot.” California is one of five states that have approved ballot initiatives to enshrine heterosexual marriage in state law. Thirty-three other states have laws on the books passed by legislatures banning same-sex marriage.

Leno’s measure would amend California law to define marriage as between “two persons.” The state first added gender-specific language to the law in 1977, followed by Prop. 22 in 2000.

Leno, and Shannon Minter, an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said Proposition 22 concerned only the threat that out-of-state marriages would be forced upon California. Therefore, they said, the Legislature could amend the California family law without interfering with the proposition.

Social conservatives who are fighting the measure said the 2000 initiative does not allow for any amendments, except by voters. They also see a moral foundation for heterosexual marriage.

“You need a sperm and an egg for the miracle of procreation. You need a man and a woman for marriage,” said Randy Thomasson, founder and executive director of Campaign for California Families. “This bill is illegitimate, it is unconstitutional and it is immoral. This bill in essence is corrupt government at its worst. If you pass this bill, you will be adding your name to something that is corrupt.”

Leno said he had been moved to introduce the bill after reading a November decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which ruled that a “marriage ban works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason.”

“Where do we turn for help to find the answers to these questions?” Leno said. “Clearly we are not a theocracy; we don’t turn to the holy books, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran. We turn to our own holy books of our democracy, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”