Feb 27, 2004  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

More than 3,200 couples have been married in San Francisco since Mayor Gavin Newsom instructed city clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples two weeks ago. While local officials around the country, including Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley, have expressed tentative support for the idea of issuing gay marriage licenses, officials in the Washington area say they have no plans to take Newsom’s approach.

Tony Bullock, communications director to District Mayor Anthony Williams, said that his office will not follow San Francisco’s lead and begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses; instead he highlighted the city’s domestic partnership program as a sign of progress.

“We don’t want to upset what’s working well with the domestic partnership program we have working here in the District,” Bullock said. “That was subjected to a 10-year delay due to congressional interference. We are in a very unique situation in America being subjected to congressional whim. We don’t want to do something that will set us back by rekindling the debate on domestic partner provisions for the District government.”

Bullock added that the mayor’s office is not seeing a large number of people “asking for more than what is already available.”

“[Domestic partnership] is a government acknowledgment of these two people and it confers all the legal rights and benefits,” Bullock said. “It’s working well and we plan on leaving it the way it is for now. That’s the consensus of the mayor.”

The D.C. domestic partner program provides only eight rights and responsibilities of the 212 benefits of marriage identified by the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington.

Raquel Guillory, press secretary for Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, said that the mayor’s gay and lesbian task force discussed the idea of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples but said they were awaiting the outcome of events in San Francisco and Massachusetts before proceeding.

“There was no recommendation to the mayor, but the matter was discussed,” Guillory said.

Guillory added that O’Malley would not be able to issue marriage licenses because they are administered by the clerk of the circuit court, which is overseen by the administration of Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich. Ehrlich has said he opposes gay marriage.

Gay Arlington County Board member Jay Fisette (D) said he has not heard of any plans for Arlington to issue gay marriage licenses.

And Beth Temple, an aide to Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille, said that the mayor’s office does not have the authority to grant such licenses since it is a state matter.

“Such a matter has to go through the legislature,” Temple said.

San Francisco debate heats up
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the debate over same-sex marriage is intensifying, following President Bush’s announcement that he supports a federal marriage amendment banning gay marriage.

Last Friday, San Francisco filed a suit against the state charging that Proposition 22, the popular 2000 initiative that a majority of Californians passed defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, violates the California Constitution.

And Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he will ask the state’s high court whether San Francisco’s issuing of same-sex marriage licenses violates state law.

“The people of California who have enacted laws that recognize marriage only between a man and a woman, and the same-sex couples who were provided marriage licenses in San Francisco deserve a speedy resolution to the question of the legality of these licenses,” Lockyer said late Monday.

The Supreme Court is not required to take either case and could wait until the lower courts issue rulings in the matter.

Several social conservative groups filed lawsuits in lower courts but two judges refused to halt the wedding spree. The next hearing in those cases is scheduled for March and, for now, the marriages continue.

California Gov. trong>Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday and reaffirmed his opposition to the gay marriages that are taking place in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of Meet the Press)

Political strategists say that Lockyer, a Democrat, was muscled into the gay marriage debate by Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who fired off a fax last Friday night to the home of a Lockyer aide in which he wrote that the actions of San Francisco’s mayor presented “an imminent risk to civil order.”

Lockyer, who is a possible Democratic challenger for governor in 2006, rebuffed Schwarzenegger’s directives and said last Saturday that the governor’s statement was “designed for consumption at the Republican convention.”

Lockyer’s predecessor, Dan Lungren, a Republican now running for a congressional seat, criticized Lockyer’s initial reluctance to get involved.

“I would ...