|
The
Washington
Post
Two Sides Testify on
Same-Sex Marriage
By Lisa Rein, from
the Web. February 15, 2008
Supporters and opponents of same-sex
marriage clashed before a Maryland Senate committee yesterday, with
traditionalists invoking religious convictions and gay rights advocates
describing their cause as a civil rights struggle.
The lengthy hearing, which drew dozens of speakers on both sides of the most
divisive social issue the General Assembly will take up this year, was headlined
by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), who became Maryland's first elected
statewide official to endorse legislation allowing same-sex marriage.
 |
|
|
Attorney
General Douglas F. Gansler became the first elected statewide
official to back gay unions.
By Chris Gardner -- Associated
Press |
|
Gansler's office had successfully
defended the state against a lawsuit by gay couples who sought to overturn a law
prohibiting same-sex marriage. But yesterday, the former prosecutor from
Montgomery County called same-sex marriage a "moral imperative" and a "basic
matter of fairness."
"This bill is fundamentally about equality," Gansler told the Senate Judicial
Proceedings Committee. "It would be wrong for me to have this job knowing
there's something so wrong in our society and just ignore it." He said
qualms about same-sex unions seem to be limited to older people: "For the
younger generation, this is a non-issue."
Gansler's testimony punctuated a debate that has simmered in Annapolis for
several years as conservative Republicans have tried to write Maryland's
34-year-old ban on same-sex unions into the state constitution. But the
issue took on new urgency on both sides last year, when the Court of Appeals
upheld the ban and left it to the General Assembly to decide the matter.
Yesterday, the committee considered several measures. One would allow
same-sex marriages, and another would abolish civil marriage ceremonies confined
to heterosexual unions and replace them with domestic partnerships for all
couples.
A third bill would put to voters a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to
a man and a woman, and a fourth would authorize "covenant marriages," unions
between men and women who would agree to accept limited grounds for divorce.
Advocates and lawmakers acknowledge that the legislature is unlikely this year
to approve either same-sex marriage or a change to the constitution to ban it.
But a compromise on civil unions for gay couples, giving them a broad range of
legal rights, has a shot at passage. The Senate committee, which has
several members who are social conservatives, could be more receptive to civil
unions.
Some of the senators and those testifying before them revealed intimate details
of their family lives.
As she expressed support for covenant marriage, Sen. Nancy Jacobs (R-Harford)
said that she and her husband once sought counseling. The bill's sponsor,
Sen. Janet Greenip (R-Anne Arundel), has described it as a way to reduce the
divorce rate and save children from what she said were divorce's consequences:
suicide attempts and lawbreaking.
Terry O'Neill, president of the Maryland chapter of the National Organization
for Women and an opponent of covenant marriage, described her years in what she
called an abusive marriage. She said covenant marriage would take Maryland
"back 30 years" by preventing women from escaping violent husbands.
Bill Wingard of Timonium, speaking against same-sex marriage, told lawmakers he
went to a therapist who thought he was a "suppressed homosexual" before he
married a woman and had five children.
Many supporters of traditional marriage said opening the institution to same-sex
unions would diminish it. They said the Bible's teachings led them to a
conviction that marriage must be between a man and a woman.
"When the name 'marriage' can be stamped on any romantic entanglement, it loses
all meaning," said Dean Nelson of Gaithersburg, director of the Network of
Politically Active Christians. Clergy members would not be required to
perform same-sex marriages under the bill.
But gay rights advocates, in arguments just as personal, made their case for
marriage rights as a step in the fight for equality.
Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), a lead sponsor of the same-sex
marriage bill, said he was married to his partner, Mark, in a church ceremony
seven years ago.
"He is my spouse," Madaleno said. "But under Maryland law, he is
invisible. It is a badge of dishonor I must wear every day." The
couple has two children.
Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), the measure's other lead sponsor, said it
was wrong for the law to allow a murderer on death row to "marry and marry and
remarry" while thousands of other couples in Maryland cannot. Fifty
lawmakers have signed on to the bill.
Raskin and Madaleno were challenged by two Republicans on the committee, Alex X.
Mooney (Frederick) and Bryan W. Simonaire (Anne Arundel), to defend polygamy if
they believe in marriage equality for every group.
"Why are we taking this one group of people and saying we want equality just for
them?" Simonaire asked. Madaleno called the question a "red herring."
|
