Bill on Same-Sex Rights Goes to Senate Panel

A bill that would extend to same-sex domestic partners many of the benefits and responsibilities of married couples advanced in the Senate on Tuesday over the objections of opponents who said it would undermine traditional marriage.

Supported by a coalition of gay rights, labor, church and civil rights organizations, the Assembly-passed bill cleared the Democratic-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee and was sent to the Appropriations Committee for further scrutiny.

Opponents, including representatives of Catholic organizations and members of other religious groups, testified that the bill threatens Proposition 22, the 2000 voter-approved initiative that recognized marriage in California as only between a man and a woman.

“It’s not a marriage bill,” Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) assured the committee. Goldberg said the Legislature’s lawyer had told her that the proposal, AB 205, would not address Proposition 22’s definition of marriage.

Goldberg noted that during the last few years, the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis have provided an array of benefits and protections for gay and lesbian couples. But she said the legislators have not extended to domestic partners some of the responsibilities and obligations that married people must accept.

Those include paying spousal and child support in divorces, being responsible for one another’s debts, owning property jointly and being able to claim a partner’s corpse from the coroner.

Goldberg’s bill would give those rights and responsibilities to homosexual couples.

As a condition of registering a domestic partnership in California, the bill also would require same-sex couples to agree to accept the jurisdiction of Superior Courts in the case of a divorce or separation of the partners.

Currently, there are no uniform rules that cover the breakup of a domestic partnership or issues related to child custody, financial support and other issues that straight divorced couples must deal with, Goldberg, a lesbian, told the committee.

As a result, California judges are in “quite a bit of confusion,” as gay couples become parents and split up in similar fashion to heterosexual couples. The bill, Goldberg said, would give the courts a road map in such cases.

Gov. Davis has no position on the bill, a spokesman said. But he added that Davis has said he favors assuring “basic human rights and equality to everyone in California.”

The bill, which passed the Assembly with no votes to spare last month, received strong support from a variety of witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing, including a teenager with “two moms,” who said the children of gay and lesbian parents are victims of ugly incidents of discrimination.

“Although we are good, honest and kind people, we face constant discrimination simply because we are different,” said Marina Gatto, 15, of San Carlos. “People vandalize our home, yell hateful things, throw rocks at us in our yard and even have tried to [burn down] the house” while one of the mothers slept inside, Marina said.

But Art Croney of the Committee on Moral Concerns responded that the measure would “kick the moral foundations out from our society.”