Defense of marriage in D.C.
By: Jonetta Rose Barras
Examiner Columnist
June 18, 2009
Same-sex marriage proponents in the District may not want to celebrate just yet. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics may have delivered them a victory, deciding earlier this week that the issue cannot go before the voters in a referendum “because it would authorize discrimination prohibited under the Human Rights Act.” But the war to preserve “traditional marriage” in the nation’s capital certainly isn’t over.
Opponents had sought to repeal D.C. Council legislation that compelled the government to recognize all gay marriages legally performed in other jurisdictions. Stand4Marriage, the coalition of clergy and District residents who requested the referendum, knew that overturning council action wouldn’t be an easy feat. Not only was there the hurdle of the Human Rights Act, under which proponents claim same-sex marriage falls under, opponents would have had to collect more than 20,000 signatures from registered voters in less than four weeks.
But the battlefield ahead may not be riddled with such barriers.
A D.C. Defense of Marriage resolution has been introduced in Congress; it mirrors the federal statute, which asserts that marriage is between only a man and a woman. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department recently filed a brief defending that law.
The congressional resolution that would establish a Defense of Marriage Act in the District could be attached to almost any existing federal bill making its way through the legislative process. Gay-marriage opponents by law also are allowed to challenge in D.C.
Superior Court the elections board’s decision. Brian Raum, the group’s counsel, said the “decision will be immediately appealed.”
That case might probe the larger question: Are gay couples in the District truly discriminated against if same-sex marriages are prohibited?
An intense conversation I had last month with at-large Councilman David Catania, who is openly gay, provide some insight.
“[Gays] already have all the rights they need,” he told me in an interview weeks before the request for a referendum was filed. Catania said that advocates in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community see marriage as the “last frontier.”
That admission is what riles opponents. It also may weaken the position of so-called “marriage equality” proponents. After all, if gay couples registered as domestic partners already have a wide variety of rights, including visiting each other during hospital stays, participating in workplace health benefits programs, filing joint tax returns, adopting children and generally being as happy or as miserable as every other couple, where is the discrimination?
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