Sep 19, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

The D.C. Attorney General’s office has softened its objections to a City Council bill that would provide parental rights to domestic partners, saying it supports partnership rights for same-sex couples.

In a July 3 letter to D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), chair of the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary & Public Safety, an Attorney General office official said concerns remain over the wording of the pending domestic partners bill.

But the official, Tonya A. Sapp, said the Attorney General’s office supports “giving appropriate legal recognition to the familial relationships that same-sex partners have with the children they care for,” and was hopeful that her office and bill supporters on the Council could resolve their differences.

In a separate development, the D.C. Office of Human Rights hinted that it would likely withdraw a controversial regulatory change it proposed in July to exempt the Department of Corrections from complying with the D.C. Human Rights Act as it applies to transgender prisoners.

In both cases, officials with the two city agencies changed their positions following strong objections raised by gay and transgender activists, plus legal and social services organizations.

“We’ve been assured that this so-called regulatory reform will not go forward,” said Jeri Hughes, coordinator of the D.C. Trans Coalition, which led efforts to oppose the proposed change.

Hughes said the change would have allowed the Department of Corrections to legally discriminate against transgender inmates.

Corrections officials had noted the change was needed because the city’s Human Rights Act could be interpreted to force city prison authorities to assign male-to-female transgender inmates — including those transitioning from one gender to the other — to female living quarters in the D.C. jail. Prison officials feared doing so would create a potential danger for female inmates, who could be subjected to sexual harassment or assault by female trans inmates who have male sex organs.

Transgender activists countered that there is no record of any harassment or abuse by transgender women against biological females, based on years of experience in prisons and other communal living situations across the country.

However, Hughes and other trans activists said the current Department of Corrections policy, which places male-to-female transgender inmates in male living quarters at the city jail, has subjected the female trans inmates to sexual harassment by male prisoners.

Hughes said female trans prisoners are forced to undress and use bathroom facilities in the presence of male inmates, subjecting them to embarrassment and humiliation.

Alexis Taylor, general counsel for the Office of Human Rights, who was charged with reviewing public comments on the proposed trans regulations, did not return a call seeking information about the public comments.

But Hughes, who told the Blade that she spoke several times with Taylor about the public comments, said Taylor informed her that virtually all of the comments opposed the regulatory changes. The comments were submitted during a required, 30-day public comment period that ended on Aug. 10.

A wide range of legal and social services experts, including groups and individuals that provide services to transgender people, submitted the comments, Hughes said.

Sapp startled gay activists by telling Mendelson in her July 10 written testimony that the domestic partners bill would violate federal law pertaining to city child-support programs and could trigger federal sanctions.

Her comments related to Bill 17-727, the Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination of Parentage Act of 2008, which Mendelson introduced in April.

Mendelson said the bill, along with one other domestic partners measure he introduced this year, would complete a 10-year effort to provide registered domestic partners in the city with all of the rights, benefits and obligations married couples receive under D.C. law.

The second partners bill addresses partner-related pensions for firefighters and police officers.

Council members are expected to approve both bills and Mayor Adrian Fenty is poised to sign them.

Mendelson, along with nationally recognized gay rights attorney and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff, disputed Sapp’s assertions that the partner parentage bill would violate federal law or jeopardize city programs for children.

Polikoff said during her own testimony before Mendelson’s committee that domestic partnership and civil union laws in states such as Vermont and Connecticut provide the same parental rights provisions for same-sex couples that the D.C. bill would provide.

“No ill effects on federal funding or conflicts in federal guidelines have occurred in any of these other states,” Polikoff said.

In her Sept. 3 letter to Mendelson, Sapp said the Attorney General’s office is committed “to the goal of ensuring that the civil rights of same-sex couples are established and protected in the District.”

“Rather than representing a departure from our commitment to equality for gay and ...