Lounge of Tomorrow - California Approves Gay Marriage

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California Senate approves bill allowing gay marriage
SACRAMENTO (AP) —

Handing gay rights advocates a major victory, the California Senate approved legislation Thursday that would legalize same-sex marriages in the nation's most populous state.

Sen. Liz Figueroa: 'When I leave this Legislature, I want to be able to tell my grandchildren I stood up for dignity and rights for all.'
By Rich Pedroncelli, AP

The 21-15 vote made the Senate the first legislative chamber in the country to approve a gay marriage bill. It sets the stage for a showdown in the state Assembly, which narrowly rejected a gay marriage bill in June.

"Equality is equality, period," said one of the bill's supporters, Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Sunol. "When I leave this Legislature, I want to be able to tell my grandchildren I stood up for dignity and rights for all."

But Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-La Mesa, suggested that "higher power" opposed the legislation.

"This is not the right thing to do," he said. "We should protect traditional marriage and uphold all of those values and institutions that have made our society and keep our society together today."

But Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, said a number of churches supported the bill: "I don't think anyone should claim God as being on their side in this debate," she said.

California already confers many of the rights and duties of marriage on gay couples, who can register as domestic partners. Massachusetts became the first state to recognize gay marriages when the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex weddings there in 2003.

Several senators equated the struggle for gay marriage to other civil rights movements. They said arguments against the bill were similar to earlier arguments in support of slavery and opposing interracial marriage.

"This is probably the most profound civil rights movement of our generation, without q doubt," said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough.

Gay rights advocates called Thursday's California vote historic.

"It will make all California families safer and more secure if it becomes law," said Seth Kilbourn, director of the Human Rights Campaign Marriage Project in New York. "The fact they debated and voted on this relatively quickly today sends a message that there is momentum for this bill."

Senate approval gave the bill's author, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, another chance to send the legislation to the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Legislature is expected to adjourn its 2005 session next week.

Leno said he planned to bring up the bill on Tuesday in the Assembly and predicted that the Senate vote would help sway undecided lawmakers in his house.

"We are so very close," he said in an interview after the Senate vote. "It would be very disappointing for this body not to be able to stand up for civil rights."

After the Assembly rejected his bill in June by four votes, Leno amended the measure's provisions into another one of his bills that had already passed the Assembly and was awaiting action in the Senate. That's the bill the Senate approved Thursday and sent back to the Assembly for a vote on Senate amendments.

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson said the office would not comment about how the governor would act if the bill is sent to his desk.

"The governor believes that the people spoke when they passed Pr position 22, and now it went to the courts and that's where it should be," she said. "The governor will abide by what the courts rule."

She added that Schwarzenegger does support domestic partnerships.

Proposition 22 was approved by California voters in 2000. The initiative added a section to the state Family Code stating that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

It was put on the ballot when it appeared that Hawaii might legalize gay marriages and was intended to prevent California from recognizing gay marriages performed elsewhere.

Leno's bill would amend a separate section of state law that bars the state from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in California.

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, one of six gay members of the state Legislature, told the chamber that gay couples have the same hopes for their relationships as heterosexual couples.

"Gay and lesbian people fall in love. We settle down. We commit our lives to one another. We raise our children. We protect them. We try to be good citizens," said Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. "This is a bill whose time has come."

Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, agreed that gay couples are entitled to certain rights but not the right to marry.

"Can't you see that marriage is a fundamentally different institution?" he said. "Marriage is the institution by which we propagate our species and inculcate our young."

The vote came as a state appellate court is considering appeals of a San Francisco judge's ruling that overturned California laws banning recognition of gay marriages. At the same time, opponents of same-sex marriage are trying to qualify initiatives for the 2006 ballot that would place a ban on gay marriages in the state Constitution.

Andrew Pugno, legal adviser to one of the two groups trying to qualify such an amendment, called the Senate vote an insult to the majority of California voters who approved Proposition 22.

"The people can speak once and for all by elevating the definition of marriage to the state Constitution, he said.