Feb 11, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

After months of promising a bold new approach to advocating for same-sex marriage rights, the Human Rights Campaign this week unveiled plans to ask Congress to pass a collection of bills that would provide gay couples with many of the benefits and rights conferred by marriage.

While saying it would continue its “hard push” for same-sex marriage itself, the group outlined a strategy that sidesteps a single, same-sex marriage bill. Instead, HRC is calling on Congress to pass separate bills to help gay families overcome the government’s denial of their right to Social Security survivor benefits, spousal exemptions from estate taxes, the ability to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, and dozens of other benefits related to marriage.

“As we have in the past, we remain committed to pushing these bills as separate measures, along with our allies who have taken leadership on these issues,” said David Smith, HRC’s newly appointed vice president for policy and strategy.

Smith disclosed HRC’s new plans in a Feb. 8 statement to the media and to gay activists throughout the country. The statement came one week after the HRC board informed the group’s 200-member staff of an “organizational restructuring” that included promoting high-level staffers to five new vice presidents’ posts.

Staff changes
Smith, who served as the HRC communications director for eight years until late 2003, when he resigned to become Senator Edward Kennedy’s chief spokesperson, returned to HRC earlier this month to become a sixth vice president.

At the time it announced the staff reshuffling, the board also announced it had created an HRC Marriage Project, which it said would redouble HRC’s effort to push for marriage rights for gays, according to a Feb. 3 news release. The release said the project, among other tasks, would work with national and state gay groups to expand HRC’s role in the marriage debate to all levels of government as well as the private sector.

In a separate announcement, the board said Winnie Stachelberg, who has served as HRC’s political director since 1997, would become vice president for the HRC Foundation, where she would expand the foundation’s research and educational work on marriage-related issues.

HRC officials said the search for a new executive director to replace Cheryl Jacques continues and that a decision is expected sometime in the spring.

Members of Congress supportive of equal rights for gays have introduced bills in the past several years calling for a number of marriage-related benefits for same-sex couples, including Social Security survivor benefits and immigration rights for gay partners similar to those given to the foreign born spouses in heterosexual marriages. All of these bills have died in committee. Capitol Hill observers say they have little chance of passing anytime soon under a Republican-controlled Congress.

Smith and Christopher Labonte, HRC’s legislative director, said HRC is working with lawmakers to introduce more bills that cover a broader array of rights and benefits for same-sex couples.

“Working with allies in the House and Senate, we intend to introduce a package that would repeal the ban on the provision of federal benefits to married same-sex couples,” said Smith in his Feb. 8 statement.

Although Smith did not say so directly, Labonte said he was referring to a clause in the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, that defines marriage under federal law as a union only between a man and a woman. Legal experts have said the clause bars gay couples that marry in Massachusetts, which has legalized same-sex marriage, from receiving any of the more than 1,100 federal rights and benefits associated with marriage.

A second clause in DOMA allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages issued in other states. Many members of Congress who opposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage said their opposition was based on the belief that DOMA would prevent legalized same-sex marriage in a single state from “imposing” such marriages on all states.

Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced bills in the past two Congresses to repeal the DOMA “benefits” clause while cautioning that it would not be politically prudent to seek the repeal of the clause on marriage recognition. Frank has said removal of the clause allowing states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states through legislation or through court decisions ...