Sep 12, 2003  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO  | COMMENTS     

Five Democratic senators joined forces with a gay Republican law professor at a Senate hearing last week to dispute the need for a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage.

“[A]n amendment banning same-sex marriage is a solution in search of a problem,” said University of Minnesota Law School Professor Dale Carpenter, a member of the gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans.

Carpenter said “federal and state laws already prevent the court-ordered imposition of nationwide same-sex marriage for the foreseeable future.” He said states should be allowed to adopt same-sex marriage if they choose to do so.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said he called the Sept. 4 hearing to discuss whether the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 could withstand a ruling by state or federal courts legalizing same-sex marriage.

The hearing took place four days before gay rights leaders and their supporters from civil rights groups met Sept. 8 in Washington to discuss strategy for advancing the cause for civil marriage for same-sex couples and opposing a constitutional amendment. The meeting was closed to the press and the public.

Gay civil rights attorney Evan Wolfson, who founded the New York-based group Freedom to Marry, declined to comment on what was said or who attended the meeting, saying the conclave was a “routine” gathering of those committed to advancing the cause of protecting gay families.

Sources familiar with the hearing, which was held at the offices of the Human Rights Campaign, said among the topics discussed was an assessment of how much support a constitutional amendment has among members of Congress and steps civil rights activists can take to oppose the amendment.

HRC held a news conference on Sept. 4, prior to the start of Cornyn’s hearing, to present several lesbian and gay male couples, who described the problems they face by not being able to secure legal recognition of their relationships.

Gay activists had expressed concern that Cornyn, an opponent of gay marriage, would stack the hearing with witnesses who oppose gay rights and support the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment that would forbid states from adopting same-sex marriage.

But Cornyn was the only one of the subcommittee’s five-member Republican contingent to show up for the hearing. Each of the panel’s four Democrats plus Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the full Senate Judiciary Committee, attended and spoke out against the constitutional amendment.

Although each of Cornyn’s four invited witnesses — a minister, two lawyers and a conservative columnist — said such a constitutional amendment was needed, the Democratic senators and their two invited witnesses each called for equal rights for same-sex relationships.

In addition to Carpenter, the other witness invited by Democrats was Keith Bradkowski, a California resident whose domestic partner died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, who gave an account of how not having a legally sanctioned relationship added to his suffering. Bradkowski’s partner, flight attendant Jeff Collman, was among those killed when one of two jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center.

“After his death, I was faced not only with my grief over losing Jeff — who was indeed my better half — but with the painful task of proving the authenticity of our relationship over and over again,” Bradkowski told the panel. “With no marriage license to prove our relationship existed, even something as fundamental as obtaining his death certificate became a monumental task.”

Democrats question purpose of hearing
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the Democratic members of the panel, criticized the decision to hold the hearing, saying the Senate was consumed with work on other, “more important” issues such as the war in Iraq, problems with the nation’s electric power grid and air pollution regulations. Kennedy called the proposed amendment unnecessary and a form of blatant discrimination against gay couples.

“What in the world are we doing here considering this constitutional amendment?” he asked.

Cornyn said the hearing was needed to help the Senate assess whether further action is necessary to “protect” the institution of marriage through the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

DOMA defines marriage under federal law as a union between a man and a woman and allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages approved by other states. Congress passed the act by a lopsided margin and President Clinton signed it.

That law’s lead sponsor, former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), has publicly lobbied against passage of a constitutional amendment, arguing that the issue ought to be left up to individual states, which have always adopted marriage and divorce ...