A coalition of gay marriage opponents asked the D.C. elections board Tuesday to authorize a ballot initiative that if approved by a majority of voters would define marriage in the District as the union of a man and a woman.
Stand4MarriageDC, led by Bishop Harry Jackson of Beltsville’s Hope Christian Church, filed papers with the Board of Elections and Ethics seeking authority to collect petition signatures for a November 2010 referendum on the definition of marriage. The filing, backed by the Archdiocese of Washington, comes ahead of an anticipated D.C. Council effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the District.
“The people of the District of Columbia should decide the issue of the definition of marriage, not 13 members of the D.C. Council,” Jackson said during a news conference.
The proposed initiative simply reads: “Only marriage between a man and woman is valid or recognized in the District of Columbia.”
Many gay rights activists view that language, and the proposed ballot measure, as discriminatory.
“Philosophically many people are opposed to having a ballot initiative that subjects a particular group’s rights to an up or down majority vote,” said Rick Rosendall, vice president of political affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance.
This is Jackson’s second run-in this year with the elections board. The first, a proposed referendum on a city law recognizing gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions, was unanimously rejected. The three-member board ruled it a violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin upheld the board’s decision in late June.
Gay marriage supporters anticipate that the elections board will again declare a marriage initiative unsuitable for the ballot. The Human Rights Campaign is “confident that the Board and the courts will once again rule that, under D.C. law, the initiative process cannot be used as a tool to discriminate and strip away civil rights,” the gay rights group said in a statement.
The Archdiocese, meanwhile, emerged to support the initiative “out of our religious teaching and our long-standing commitment to serving the common good,” the Most Rev. Barry Knestout wrote in a letter to Elections Board Chairman Errol Arthur.
Democratic committees in five of eight city wards have backed resolutions supporting same-sex marriage. But Jackson was optimistic that a majority of D.C.’s 412,000-plus registered voters “hold traditional values very high” and would back the initiative.
Councilman David Catania, one of two openly gay council members, is expected to introduce a gay marriage bill this fall.
