Gay marriage, partnership battles heat up in the Washingtons

By Lisa Keen, Keen News Service
10.27.2009 8:41am EDT

Same-sex marriage battles heated up across the country Monday, as voting nears in Washington State and tensions escalated in Washington, D.C., with opponents evoking “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Rick Rosendall, a spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, was among the first to speak at the hearing in Washington, D.C. He told the D.C. Council that opponents of same-sex marriage “describe marriage equality activists as both a small minority and a Goliath that needs a David to slay us.”

“Bishop [Harry] Jackson,” a leading opponent of same-sex marriage in D.C., “talks as if gay people just arrived here from another planet,” said Rosendall. “In fact, our roots in this city run deep. We have helped build our communities, and we will defend them from the ministers of fear and intolerance.” That was around the start of the hearing, at 3:30.

Nearly 100 witnesses and more than seven hours later, Ernestine Copeland, an opponent of same-sex marriage, ended the first day of the hearing at 10:58, asking, “Who among you would allow your male dog to lie with a male dog?” She harangued the Council for deciding “to lead my people to hell” by supporting same-sex marriages which “will destroy our society.”

At the same time, the D.C. board of elections held its own hearing Monday — on whether to allow a proposed initiative to ban licensing of same-sex marriages in the city. According to the Washington Blade, a D.C. gay newspaper, about 100 people showed up for that hearing, most of them for the initiative. Earlier this year, the board rejected a ballot measure to overturn a new law that recognizes marriage licenses granted to same-sex couples by other states.

The same-sex marriage bill was sponsored by openly gay Councilmember David Catania, a former Republican, now Independent. It is co-sponsored by ten of the Council’s 14 members. The Council voted 12 to 1 in May to approve a law that gives legal recognition to marriage licenses obtained by same-sex couples in other jurisdictions.

Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary and a co-sponsor of the bill, said the committee would “hear from the remaining 169 witnesses” during the second day of the two-day hearing, Monday, Nov. 2.

In Washington State, polling data give pro-gay forces a slight edge going into Tuesday’s vote, where Referendum Measure 71 will ask voters whether to approve or reject a newly passed domestic partnership law.

Though it is a matter being put to voters, most of the media attention has been bogged down in various court skirmishes over whether public documents — such as petitions which called for the referendum — can be withheld from the public and whether contributions can be limited.

The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in briefly, voting 8 to 1 on October 20, to uphold a decision that blocks the release of the Referendum 71 petitions until a federal court can hold a trial on the issue. (Justice John Paul Stevens was the lone dissenter.)

The anti-gay group Protect Marriage Washington filed the original lawsuit, claiming the availability of the petitions publicly violated the First Amendment rights of the people who signed the petitions because the public disclosure chills their speech. In a separate federal lawsuit, the Family Policy Institute is challenging the state’s disclosure laws for contributions to the referendum campaign and limits on the size of those contributions.