Jan 30, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

DOVER, Del. — A committee of the Delaware State Senate that includes two lawmakers from beach resort areas popular with gays is expected to decide in early March whether a state gay civil rights bill is enacted into law or dies in committee, as it has in the past two legislative sessions.

The legislation, known as House Bill 99, would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, public accommodations, housing, insurance and contracting for state-funded public works projects. If enacted, Delaware would become the 15th state, along with the District of Columbia, to pass a gay civil rights measure. Four states include gender identity in their laws.

Delaware’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill last year, and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) has said she would sign the legislation.

Supporters say the bill’s main stumbling block has been the Democrat-controlled State Senate, whose committees are dominated by socially conservative “Dixiecrats” from southern, rural sections of the state. Those areas include the Delaware beach communities popular with gays, such as the towns of Rehoboth Beach and Lewes.

In 2002, the bill died in the Senate Small Business Committee, when Sen. Robert Venables, a Democrat from Laurel, Del., located about 40 miles west of Rehoboth Beach, refused to take any action on the measure.

At the start of the legislative session two weeks ago, Sen. Thurman Adams, a conservative Democrat and the Senate’s president pro tem, assigned the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Adams is from Bridgeville, a town known for its antique shops located about 25 miles west of Lewes, where gay and straight visitors from the D.C. area pass through on their way to the beach.

Sen. James Vaughn, another conservative Democrat who opposes HB 99, chairs the Judiciary Committee, where the bill is now pending. Vaughn has reportedly said he would consider releasing the bill from his committee to allow a vote on the Senate floor, although he plans to vote against it.

“We are reasonably hopeful that it will come up for a floor vote, and the Senate will approve it,” said Drew Fennell, an official with the Delaware American Civil Liberties Union.

Fennell, a lesbian activist who is coordinating lobbying efforts on behalf of the bill, said Adams’ decision to assign the bill to Vaughn’s committee, rather than Venables’, has been interpreted by political observers as a signal that he supports allowing the measure to go to the Senate floor for an up or down vote.

However, signals about the bill’s fate in Vaughn’s Judiciary Committee have been mixed, according to news reports from the state capital in Dover. An Associated Press story on Jan. 14 quoted Vaughn as saying he had yet to make up his mind on whether to release the bill.

“I don’t know,” the AP quoted Vaughn as saying, when asked how he would handle the bill. “That’s a bit premature for me to answer.”

The Delaware News Journal reported that same day that Senate Majority Leader Harris B. McDowell II, a Democrat from Wilmington and a member of the Judiciary Committee, believes the committee will vote to send the legislation to the full Senate.

“It’s not going to die in committee,” the News Journal quoted McDowell as saying. “We’re going to get it out of there and pass the bill.”

Committee vote key
Steve Elkins, executive director of Camp Rehoboth, a gay advocacy group in Rehoboth Beach, said this week that recent developments appear to back McDowell’s view that a majority of the six-member committee favors releasing the bill to the Senate floor. But Elkins said doubts remain over whether Vaughn will allow the committee to vote on the bill.

Elkins noted that Venables has said he plans to introduce one or more amendments to the bill if it reaches the floor that, if passed, would require that the House reconsider the measure. “That would likely kill it for this year,” Elkins said.

Venables and other senators who oppose the bill are expected to propose amendments similar to those introduced and defeated last year in the Delaware House of Representatives. One called for removing the phrase “real or perceived” sexual orientation from the legislation, an action that supporters said would “gut” the legislation. Another amendment called for prohibiting public schools from including instruction on sexual orientation in sex education programs.

Beach area reps take hostile view of bill
Gay activists involved in lobbying for H.B. 99 point to what they see as an irony that several state senators hostile toward the bill — and who are playing a pivotal role ...