Following passage of the bill in the Illinois House yesterday, just now the Illinois State Senate passed (count of 32-24) a bill providing protections to same-sex couples via civil unions (as well as opposite-sex, unmarried couples). The bill will go to Gov. Pat Quinn, who has pledged to sign it, and it will take effect in July. Illinois will become the 12th state (plus DC) to provide some kind of relationship recognition to same-sex couples.
Often during these events, conversations begin about whether to settle for "halfbaked" respect in the form of civil unions or domestic partnerships rather than push for full marriage equality. For more on this, I've written about this here and here. First, I defer to Illinois couples who face social oppression, higher costs, lack of crucial family protections and so forth, want. It's not my partner whom I can't visit in the hospital, or make funeral arrangements for. That's up to them, and many couples would rather have civil unions and the rights that come with them today then marriage equality in an undetermined period of time from now.
Second, I think my colleague Evan Wolfson with Freedom to Marry, via press release, has it right:
While a welcome step, civil union is no substitute for the full measure of respect, clarity, security, responsibilities, and protection of marriage itself. States that have created civil union as a means of both giving and withholding - providing legal protections while withholding the freedom to marry and all its meaning - have found that civil union falls far short of marriage with all its tangible and intangible significance in our lives. Many of those states - Connecticut, New Hampshire, and even Vermont, which first created civil union - have since pushed past civil union to marriage, recognizing the inadequacy and unfairness of a separate and unequal status.
Civil unions are no substitute for the real thing, and we'll all keep pushing for that full recognition and respect.
Third, as commenter texas dem noted in the past, this helps move the ball down the field.
Civil unions are frequently a route to moving the ball down the field. They provide some relief to some people now, they get people comfortable with the idea of legal recognition for gay relationships, and they create the real-world proof that less than full equality is just not good enough. A few years of civil unions, and a few horror stories of their failures, can help prepare people for and convince people of the need for full marriage equality.
So good on Illinois legislators and advocates, and now onto the freedom to marry.
As you may have seen via Freedom to Marry's coverage here at OpenLeft (you can see their posts so far here and here), National Organization for Marriage is taking their "Summer for Homophobia Marriage" tour nationwide. Today, they were in New Jersey, and as part of their response, Garden State Equality put together this video demonstrating how civil unions haven't worked in New Jersey:
One person commented to me that if civil unions aren't working, then why is the LGBT community supporting them (and for my part, why am I doing things like blogging on the Hawaii civil unions law that Gov. Lingle just vetoed, or asking folks to help approve Referendum 71 in Washington State last fall, which would protect the state's same-sex domestic partnership law?)? In other words, why work for "half-measures"?
The answer is two-fold. First, what happens in New Jersey is not the same as what happens in Washington State, or what may happen in Hawaii. In fact, what doesn't work in one part of New Jersey may not even be the same as what works in another part, e.g. a hospital administrator accepting civil union papers in one county while an employer rejects them in another. That's not to say what Garden State Equality is saying- that civil unions aren't working for New Jersey couples and families- isn't true. It is, and I said that when I was blogging about the marriage equality legislation moving through the New Jersey legislature last winter. We still need marriage equality to protect all couples, so couples in allcounties are equally protected. The point here is that civil unions aren't working for New Jersey right now.
The second issue is that if you ask couples in Hawaii if they'd rather have civil unions and the rights that come with them tomorrow or marriage equality in a few years, many would take civil unions, even with its problems. When I think about whether or not to engage in these kinds of campaigns, for me in the end, it all comes down to what would be best for those who are most affected by a law. Give-and-take over whether to reject civil unions and hold out for marriage are always important, but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's medical rights, health insurance, burial rights, and more. If that's what's best for same-sex couples in Hawaii and it's the best move to make strategically, then half-measure or not, that's what works for me.
Unbelievable. Jeremy Hooper has audio of the press conference. The House had passed the bill 31-20 and the Senate 18-7, but action on this will have to wait until the 2011 legislative session as legislative leaders have stated they will not go into special session to attempt a veto override. My deepest sympathies for couples in the state, and those who worked hard on this.
More background on the mess to get this bill through the Legislature is here. For some reason, it took Lingle weeks and weeks to make up her mind to not even be able to get to a place of basic fairness for same-sex couples. I'm putting highlight quotes in the extended entry (h/t Rex Wockner), as some of them make my blood boil so much this post would take up another page to respond.
In response, the ACLU and Lambda Legal are preparing to file a lawsuit.
Back in January, the Hawaii State House of Representatives killed a pro-LGBT civil union bill from coming to the floor. Numerous theories abound, including that House Speaker Say had the votes but didn't want to deal with the issue in an election year, Senate President and Congressional candidate Colleen Hanabusa (as kolea noted in the comments at the time) sprung this on the House to repair relationships with the LGBT community, the House didn't have the votes to override a potential Gov. Lingle veto threat that she never made, etc.
Equality Hawaii and its allies were finally able to push it through, as the House passed the bill on the very last day of the session, 31-20. The bill would also extend civil unions to unmarried opposite-sex partners. The passage also came under threat of a lawsuit from Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Hawaii, which issued such a threat following the the House move back in January. The bill had already been passed by the Senate and Gov. Lingle has 45 days to announce whether she will sign it, veto it, or allow it to become law without her signature. She has not announced a decision yet, but I am told she has allowed other LGBT bills to become law without her signature, and promised to sign such a bill when she ran for governor in 2002.
Hawaii was actually the original battleground on marriage equality back in 1993 when the state Supreme Court ruled that the statute limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples was unconstitutional unless the state could prove it justified a compelling state interest and did not abridge rights, before a 1998 voter referendum gave the legislature the power to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples, which it did. Same-sex couples have gone without these benefits since then, and it is good to see additional protections added. Kudos to all who pushed this through.
Also from the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit (paprogressivesummit.com), I'd like to bring you a few videos form a panel simply entitled 'Marriage Equality'. On this panel, the speakers discussed the benefits, issues, and consequences or allowing homosexual couples marriage rights equal to those of heterosexual ones. The panelists and approached the topic from a variety of angles. Some spoke about the legal issues equality, both in the PA state legislature and in the constitution, others talked about the religious aspects, especially from the Christian and Jewish traditions, and others talked about the moral and human rights aspect of the debate.
The clips below go into many of the arguments against marriage equality and gay marriage and why most of them struggle for validity. The first video, PA state senator Daylin Leach, who sponsored a bill in the PA state legislature in support on marriage equality, goes into many of the arguments against gay marriage that he has heard while debating the bill. As he says, no one has debated him twice, because no one has presented him an argument with any validity. The second video looks at many of the religious issues brought up by the marriage equality debate. Many think that religion has no part of the legal debate over gay marriage and often when religion is invoked, it is done so incorrectly. Finally, the last clip discusses why marriage equality supporters should want legalized gay marriage and not civil unions. Civil unions seem like an acceptable compromise, but really they are impractical and still discriminatory.
In what appears to be something of a surprise, the Hawaii House of Representatives killed a civil unions bill today. The Senate recently passed the bill 18-7 and it was expected to pass the House and go to Gov. Lingle's desk, but Speaker Say said his body may not take up the bill if the House did not have enough votes to override. On the other hand, according to Equality Hawaii, Gov. Lingle never actually made a veto threat. It makes you wonder if legislators simply weren't willing to stick their necks out in an election year if it weren't absolutely certain the bill would become law. The Speaker made a motion to postpone the bill indefinitely. What makes it all the more surprising is that the House passed a civil unions bill last year by a margin of 33-17 that only applied to same-sex couples, while this bill actually extended benefits to heterosexual couples as well.
There is likely some backstory on why this happened. Very, very disappointing, to say the least.
I've so far heard two arguments I've heard that have come out of the loss in Maine. The first is that we'll never win statewide ballot votes on marriage equality until demographics change, e.g. older, more socially conservative people become a smaller part of the electorate. The second is that the game is fixed because voting on civil rights of the LGBT community amounts to tyranny of the majority, and the majority will always vote to oppress the minority. I've dissented with both arguments.
A third argument is that, given the success in Washington State this year, the LGBT community should focus on a system of domestic partnerships for same-sex and opposite-sex couples that have full federal equality under the law. Currently, if you are in a domestic partnership arrangement- lesbian, gay, bisexual or heterosexual- the Defense of Marriage Act restricts the extension of more than 1,100 federal benefits, as it does for same-sex married couples. So you can't use unpaid sick leave to care for your partner. You can't file federal taxes jointly. You can't receive Social Security survivors' benefits. Opposite-sex couples don't take such arrangements because when they find out they don't get the federal benefits, so they opt for marriage.
But, the argument goes:
Members of Congress are more likely to "compromise" at approval of extending full federal benefits to those in domestic partnership arrangements, since such arrangements affect heterosexual couples too, thus diminishing the argument that these are "special rights for homosexuals". Examples include two single, heterosexual sisters living together who wish for each other to have medical decision rights, or opposite-sex couples who do not believe in the concept of marriage, or want some basic rights like hospital visitation until they decide to marry.
By focusing on comprehensive domestic partnerships, there is a potential to mobilize non-LGBT couples (the sisters, or opposite-sex couples who don't want to be married) who want full federal benefits. Straight allies exist as advocates for same-sex marriage, but are not as invested.
Advancing this strategy is more likely to win benefits in the short-term than fighting battles that will only be won when anti-equality older people become a smaller share of the electorate. Rights are more important than the "m"-word.
On the other hand, there are a multitude of problems:
Implementation. In New Jersey, where civil unions enacted in 2007 exist, hospitals, employers, etc. have refused to recognize any certificate that doesn't say marriage. You can argue that's a personnel problem rather than a policy problem- for example, federal laws ban discrimination in housing on many bases, but it still occurs in practice. But the problem still remains that many couples cannot use their newfound rights, so these incrementalist measures do not always work in practice.
Domestic partnership-type arrangements don't work across state lines. A married couple can vacation in another state and still have medical decision rights if something happens. A couple in a domestic partnership from another state do not.
The potential difficulty of creating a class that is lesser than marriage at the federal level and administering it. Which state programs would qualify? What about same-sex married couples?
I am always open to incrementalism, and favored that approach around ENDA and gender identity in 2007. But in this case, domestic partnerships/civil unions in practice do not work as fully as they should or are expected to. It is also dangerous to push for this as the policy goal in lobbying, and creating the impression among legislators looking for an "everything but marriage" compromise that this is the same thing in all but name. In looking at the policy execution, it's clear that it's not.
In more conservative states where it's possible to achieve these rights, we should absolutely push to do so if it's clear we are far away from marriage equality. In places where we are close- like New York, or where incrementalist measures have already been implemented, like New Jersey and DC- the push should continue. I discuss the politics of this in part two.
As some of you may know, Greg Harris again passed a bill that would allow civil unions in the state of Illinois. His attempt last year was side-swiped by Blago's impeachment trial at the end of the legislative season which delayed the vote.
Apparently, the different now is that according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) , the Mormon Church is bringing their anti-gay crusade to Illinois
The e-mail, sent to at least one LDS ward in Illinois, was authorized by Bishop Chris Church, of the Nauvoo, Illinois 3rd Ward, and was sent out by that website's ward administrator. The messaging in the e-mail carries many of the same bigoted lies that were hallmarks of the LDS Church's campaign in support of Proposition 8 in California and Proposition 102 in Arizona. The e-mail misleads citizens in Illinois by blatantly misstating that the civil unions legislation would "empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise." It goes on to issue this incendiary and inaccurate warning - "it will also create grounds for rewriting all social mores." The e-mail was uncovered by BoxTurtleBulletin.com, a website that tracks and monitors anti-gay rhetoric.
Greg Harris himself sees the national implications such a bill will have and the mounting opposition from outside groups
Our opponents now see passage of civil union legislation in Illinois as a very real threat. Some of the forces that came in from out of state to defeat Proposition 8 in California are now beginning to turn their attention to our State.
Advocates in Illinois are now gearing up for a statewide campaign with national implications for this legislation as the United States turns its attention to Illinois on the issues of equality and fairness.
I am asking that for those of you who take same-sex liberties seriously, as I do, to please track the progress of HB2234. Please contact state representatives so they know where you stand, and help counter-balance those voices which oppose basic same-sex couple equality.
While I'm fairly certain we will win this battle, I'm not willing to watch a good bill slip away, again.
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