Mar 28, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Maryland legislators are expected to pass a handful of gay-related bills before they adjourn, including some tax benefits and hospitalization rights.

But more ambitious proposals that sought to enact civil unions and bar discrimination against transgender people have fizzled this week after they failed to advance before a key deadline passed.

Carrie Evans, policy director at Equality Maryland, said legislators are likely to adjourn April 7 without passing marriage, civil unions or robust domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples.

She said the proposals, which never won crucial committee support from Sen. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George’s County), are effectively dead.

“Barring God coming down to the Senate floor and telling Sen. Muse to vote for it,” Evans said, “which is, I think, the only thing that would move Sen. Muse at this point.”

Muse, who has not responded this session to the Blade’s multiple interview requests, also was blamed for killing efforts to bar discrimination against transgender people.

Evans said the proposal has sufficient support to pass the House, but remains stuck in committee there because House leaders are reluctant to call votes on bills the Senate is unlikely to pass.

She said Muse, who opposes the antidiscrimination bill, would cast a deciding vote in the Senate committee that must review the measure before it saw a floor vote.

“We can’t get it to the floor until Muse changes his mind,” Evans said.

Despite these defeats, gay activists welcomed Senate passage of two bills that would benefit gay Marylanders and noted the chamber could yet pass another related bill.

Evans said senators voted 26-21 late last week to pass a bill that would add domestic partners to a list of blood and legal relatives that are exempted from recordation and transfer taxes. The bill is expected to pass the House.

“The House is a much more progressive body than the Senate,” she said. “There’s not going to be any problem.”

Evans said the House also is expected to pass a measure that grants gay Marylanders the right to visit a partner in the hospital and make certain medical decisions for them. Senators backed the measure last week, 30-17.

Lawmakers could yet act on another proposal, which would exempt a domestic partner from inheritance taxes.

Evans said although the bill missed this week’s crossover deadline, the date by which one chamber must send to the other any bills it intends to pass, senators could yet pass the bill.

“There’s hundreds of bills right now that are still going to cross over, it just has to go to rules committee first,” she said. “It has to get voted out of rules committee, and that’s generally not a problem. So there’s just one extra step that we’ll have to plan for.”

Evans said the proposed inheritance tax exemption, which bore complex language and yielded uncertain financial implications, was a tricky one to explain to lawmakers.

“Even for me, who went to law school and had a specialty in estate planning,” she said, “it’s a very complicated area of tax law.”

But she said a growing number of senators were supporting it this week and the measure was headed toward passage.

“We should have at least our 26 from recordation,” Evans said, “and hopefully a few more so we get closer to the 30 we had for the hospital bill.”

She said Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to sign the hospital bill and both tax exemption bills, should they pass the General Assembly.

“It would be surprising to us if he would not sign them if he was willing to support and sign a civil unions bill,” Evans said, “because these are all rights that would have been included in a civil unions bill.”

O’Malley’s office did not immediately respond to the Blade’s request for comment.

Joshua Lynsen can be reached at jlynsen@washblade.com.