District Councilmember Phil Mendelson plans to complete work soon on the Omnibus Domestic Partner Equality Act, which he says would substantially expand the rights and responsibilities of domestic partners in the city. (Blade file photo)
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LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, November 30, 2007
Gay activists will be watching with interest when the newly formed gay group D.C. For Marriage holds its first public event on Dec. 6, which it is billing as a Community Forum on Marriage Equality in the District of Columbia.
Most of the founding members of D.C. For Marriage have called on the city government to pass a same-sex marriage rights bill as soon as this year. Two of the group’s founders, gay activists Lane Hudson and Michael Crawford, argued at a gay forum earlier this year that existing gay groups were being overly cautious in holding back on pushing for a same-sex marriage rights bill in D.C. after Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007.
Hudson and Crawford have since said they want to widen the discussion over the timing of a D.C. same-sex marriage bill by allowing members of the community to air their views at a public forum. In the addition to gay marriage, the forum is scheduled to discuss several pending bills calling for expanding the scope and reach of the city’s existing domestic partnership law.
The D.C. Center, the city’s LGBT community center, is co-sponsoring the marriage forum, and the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s two largest gay advocacy groups, are among the local organizations that have endorsed the event, which is set to take place 7 p.m. Dec. 6 at the John Wilson municipal building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Room 412.
Bob Summersgill, a member of GLAA who has emerged as one of the city’s leading advocates for expanding the District’s domestic partners law, has joined forces with D.C. For Marriage, Hudson said. Summersgill is expected to speak at the forum about rights and obligations already in place for D.C. same-sex couples under the existing domestic partners law.
Other leaders of the D.C. For Marriage group include local gay health advocate David Mariner and former Democratic National Committee gay liaison director Donald Hitchcock.
The marriage forum comes at a time when nearly all of Washington’s established gay advocacy organizations believe the time is still not right for D.C. Council to pass a same-sex marriage bill.
The advocacy groups, led by GLAA and the Stein Club, have for years expressed strong support for same-sex marriage rights in the District.
But the two groups have said anti-gay members of Congress would almost certainly invoke their authority to overturn a D.C. gay marriage bill under the city’s limited Home Rule charter, opening up a heated, national debate on gay marriage in the midst of the 2008 presidential election campaign.
“It would hand the Republicans gay marriage as a wedge issue once again, just as it’s mostly no longer an issue in the election,” said gay Democratic activist and Stein Club member Peter Rosenstein.
All but two members of the 13-member D.C. Council have said they would vote for a same-sex marriage bill, and Mayor Adrian Fenty has pledged to sign such a bill. However, Fenty and most Council members have added a stipulation that they would move ahead with a gay marriage bill only after determining that the climate was right on Capitol Hill.
Almost all have said they agree with GLAA and Stein Club leaders that hostile members of Congress would try to overturn a same-sex marriage bill and possibly introduce a separate bill to bar the District from legalizing same-sex marriage in the future.
Meanwhile, the groups have devoted their efforts to expanding the domestic partner law, with the aim of providing same-sex couples with all of the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage under D.C. law.
District Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), who chairs Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, said he hopes to complete work in January on the Omnibus Domestic Partner Equality Act of 2007. Earlier this year, the authors of other pending domestic partner bills, including those introduced by gay Councilmembers David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), agreed to merge their bills into the omnibus bill introduced by Mendelson.
“It would substantially expand the rights and responsibilities of domestic partners in the District of Columbia in a wide range of areas,” Mendelson said. Among them, he said, would be in joint ownership rights of real property and the possession of the remains of a partner who dies.
GLAA spokesperson Rick Rosendall said the Mendelson omnibus bill, along with other pending domestic partner bills, call for changes to various D.C. laws so that domestic partners would be included in all city programs and regulations that pertain to married spouses.
Jim Graham, left, talks with Lane Hudson in this Blade file photo taken at a Stein Club party in September. Graham has been one of Washington City Council's strongest advocates for same-sex marriage recognition in the District. Hudson is a founding member of the new group D.C. for Marriage. Graham and Hudson are both gay. (Blade file photo by Henry Linser) |
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“The Council is very interested in doing all it can to validate same-sex relationships just short of marriage,” said Graham, who has been among Council’s strongest backers of same-sex marriage.
“At some point soon we will be ready to say let’s move ahead on marriage,” Graham said. “In D.C., it’s just a matter of time. And the time is getting shorter and shorter.”
Crawford, who serves as president of D.C. For Marriage, said he is mindful of concerns by GLAA and the other local groups that a series of “ideal” conditions in Congress should be in place before D.C. should risk passing a same-sex marriage bill.
Among those conditions, GLAA officials have said, would be the passage by Congress of one or more gay rights bills, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the election or re-election of more gay-supportive members of the House and Senate.
“We all agree it’s a matter of timing and strategy,” Crawford said. “But in politics, we rarely get the ideal.”
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