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Veteran activist Frank Kameny recommends the Council pass a same-sex marriage bill as an emergency measure. (Blade file photo by Henry Linser)
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: LOU CHIBBARO JR COMMENTS
 
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push through a marriage bill in the early part of the year.
Other activists have predicted that Congress would most likely take steps to block or overturn a same-sex marriage law approved by the Council, despite the fact that Democrats expanded their majorities in the House and Senate in the November election.
“I’ll be talking about how the local Democratic Party’s leadership and organization can help us move this forward,” said Jeffrey Richardson, president-elect of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club and one of the panelists scheduled to speak at the marriage forum on Thursday. The Stein club is the city’s largest gay political group.
Richardson takes office as club president in January. He said gay marriage legislation in D.C. would be at the top of the club’s agenda at its January meeting.
Others scheduled to serve as panelists at the marriage forum were Jon Hoadley, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, a gay partisan group; and Crawford of D.C. for Marriage.
Officials with the Human Rights Campaign, which was set to host the forum at its headquarters building on Rhode Island Ave., N.W., did not make a public statement regarding its own views about a D.C. same-sex marriage bill prior to the forum.
HRC is the nation’s largest gay advocacy organization and spends much of its time lobbying for gay rights legislation pending before Congress. Local activists have said D.C. would need HRC’s help in guiding a same-sex marriage bill through the congressional review process.
While HRC is expected to help the D.C. gay community fend off congressional opposition to a gay marriage bill, HRC is also likely to be concerned that a congressional blow-up over same-sex marriage could make it more difficult to advance other gay rights legislation pending in Congress.
HRC and other national gay groups have said they plan to push for passage in 2009 of a hate crimes prevention bill and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, both of which include protections for gays and transgender persons.
In an election-night interview with the Blade, HRC president Joe Solmonese said he was hopeful that Congress would look favorably on a number of pending gay- and transgender-related bills, but he declined to comment on a D.C. gay marriage bill.
Groups co-sponsoring Thursday’s forum include the Stein Club, the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, HRC, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Bilerico.com, Log Cabin Republicans of D.C., and the D.C. Center.
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