Although more than 75 witnesses testified at the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics hearing Monday on a proposed voter initiative to define marriage in the District as being between a man and a woman, there were few legal arguments presented.
Rather, most who came before the board spoke based on emotion. And the majority of the witnesses were in favor of getting the issue before the District’s nearly 400,000 registered voters.
The push from the city’s religious community comes as the D.C. Council considers legalizing same-sex marriage with 10 of 13 council members in support of at-large Councilman David Catania’s marriage equality bill.
“The consequences of this matter are too great for just 13 people to bear,” Corinthia Boone of the International Christian Host Coalition said in her testimony before the elections board. “Let us vote.”
But a citywide vote on the matter could violate the Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, among other things.
“Certain people could get married … while other’s can’t because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender,” at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson explained to the board.
He added that because D.C. recognizes the unions of same-sex couples married in other jurisdictions, the proposed marriage initiative would discriminate against those couples, as the law would take that away.
“A civil right should not be subject to an initiative,” said Mendelson, echoing the opinion of the handful of witnesses who opposed the proposal.
But many members of the faith community disagreed; contending that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue.
Janet Boynes, a self-proclaimed converted lesbian, blasted gay marriage proponents for riding “on the coattails of the civil rights movement.”
“There is a vast difference between sexuality and the color of one’s skin. I can change from gay to straight, I cannot change from black to white,” she said.
Mark Levine, counsel for the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, said such arguments would make Martin Luther King turn over in his grave.
The board is expected to reject the initiative as discrimination under the D.C. Human Rights Act, just as it ruled earlier this year in the case of a proposed referendum on the District’s gay marriage recognition law.
