Feb 11, 2005  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

Adam Ebbin knows he must pick his battles in the Virginia General Assembly carefully. As the only openly gay lawmaker in the state legislature, he cannot effectively fight each of the growing list of anti-gay bills.

But this week, after listening to conservative lawmakers claim that gays are destroying heterosexual marriages, the freshman delegate delivered an impassioned speech to his colleagues.

“I cannot stand by while this body uses gays and lesbians as scapegoats for what has happened to the institution of marriage,” Ebbin said in prepared remarks on the House floor.

“What are we defending marriage from? Are we defending it from the high heterosexual divorce rate by seeing that we will never grant civil unions? Are we defending marriage from the criminal offense of adultery? No, we are not. … This is all about politics and re-election campaigns. The measure before us addresses none of the threats or challenges that husbands and wives face today.”

Despite Ebbin’s pleas, the House of Delegates this week approved a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage by a 78-18 vote. The Senate voted Monday 30-10 in favor of its version of the amendment. The General Assembly must approve the amendment again during the 2006 legislative session before it can go to Virginia voters in November of that year.

Despite a record number of anti-gay bills passed by the House of Delegates, ranging from the prohibition of gay adoptions to a measure that would introduce license plates touting “traditional marriage,” Ebbin says that his spirits remain high.

“I feel good,” he said. “You sit here and listen to the bad legislation — which is not just targeted to gays and lesbians — but the things we do, to immigrants and others … It is difficult not to speak up all the time because freshmen don’t talk too much. I said I was going to stand up against anti-gay, anti-immigrant and anti-common sense legislation but you have to pick and choose.

“I knew this [constitutional amendment] was coming up and I had time to think about what I was saying. There’s something very empowering having that microphone on the House floor and being able to speak. I’m naturally talkative but it takes a lot of discipline not to stand up and shout every time there is an absurdity. And there is a lot of it.”

Anti-gay rhetoric has exploded in Virginia this year, as conservative lawmakers appear buoyed by last November’s election results in which 11 state amendments banning gay marriage — and in some instances any type of gay union — passed overwhelmingly.

Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia, said that the fusillade of anti-gay bills introduced thus far in the 2005 session indicates that Virginia is quickly becoming the most anti-gay state in the country.

“Personally, I think they are trying to cash in on what they see as a mandate from this last election and I think they are obviously going too far and if they continue to proceed at this pace, we will be the most anti-gay state in the U.S.,” Mason said.

The anti-gay bills this year have taken on a particularly nasty tone, especially after last year’s Assembly passed the Marriage Affirmation Act, a measure that not only bans gay unions, but outlaws legal agreements between residents of the same sex that resemble marriage rights.

HB 2921, the adoption bill, requires that the circuit court ask would-be parents if they are “known to engage in current voluntary homosexual activity” or are “unmarried and cohabiting with another adult to whom he is not related by blood or marriage.” The measure passed the House and has been referred to a Senate committee.

Another measure, which sought to ban gay/straight alliances in public schools, was modified by the House to give such authority to individual school boards as opposed to the state.

In one positive development for Virginia gays, the state Senate killed a bill that would have allowed local congregations to secede from a church or diocese yet retain its local property, including real estate. Critics of the bill contend it was drafted in response to the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. Bishop V. Gene Robinson’s consecration angered many Episcopalians, many of whom also ...