Gay Rights Battle Moves To Legislature Bill Would Ban Same-Gender Marriages; Activists Hold Rally On Capitol Steps

The battle over gay rights, including a proposed ban on same-sex marriages, has turned from the ballot box to the Legislature, both sides agreed Wednesday.

About 100 gay rights activists rallied on the Capitol steps and later visited individual legislators with their message: “Don’t legalize discrimination.”

Speakers included the state’s only openly gay legislator, Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, a lesbian whose successful court challenge of her dismissal from the Washington National Guard was the subject of a recent made-for-TV movie.

Murray said he had just introduced a “gay civil rights” bill - the 18th year it has been filed - and has dubbed it the “Cal Anderson law against discrimination” in honor of the Seattle state senator who died of AIDS last fall. The bill would add homosexuals to the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

But with the state House controlled by conservatives, that measure is expected to die without a hearing.

Indeed, gay rights activists said their real work during this legislative session is defensive, trying to beat back at least three proposals.

Rep. Bill Thompson, R-Everett, and a dozen colleagues have introduced a bill to ban same-gender marriages.

Expecting the Hawaii Supreme Court to legalize the practice in that state, Thompson and Rep. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, said Washington state should head off the possibility of homosexuals getting married in Hawaii and returning to Washington and demanding the rights of heterosexual couples. That could be expensive for businesses and government, particularly for additional health care costs, the lawmakers said in interviews.

Stevens said her main objection is on moral grounds.

“If our society deteriorates to where we no longer honor marriage as an institution as it was intended, we are on a slippery slope,” she said.

Many of the speakers at the rally said same-gender marriages are a way for gay people to affirm long-term commitments and to receive the benefits and protection they deserve as citizens of equal standing with heterosexuals.

Other anticipated legislation includes a ban on gay adoptions and on public schools teaching about homosexuality in a positive light. Citizen initiatives on both of those issues failed to qualify for the ballot last year.

Backers of both ballot measures say they have no plans for further initiative campaigns.

“You know the line about winning the battle but not the war?” said Jan Bianchi, a Seattle attorney who heads the board of Hands Off Washington, the main campaign group for gay rights. “As of this week, the war moves from the initiative front into the Statehouse.”

Stevens, a leader of the religious conservatives in the state, said the same-gender marriage issue has the most steam and probably is the only one of the anti-gay-rights issues that will pass the House this session. But the bill probably will die in the Democratic-controlled Senate, she and Thompson said.

Gov. Mike Lowry said in an interview that he will veto any anti-gay-rights legislation that hits his desk.

But “we at least need to get it (same-gender marriages) out and talk about it,” Thompson said. “Frankly, this is pretty new to everybody. If it happens, it should come through the front door (as a legislative decision), not through the back door (from the courts).”

Cammermeyer told the rally she finds it ironic and sad that people still are debating basic human rights, rather than using the time and effort to solve pressing problems of the day. She said opponents of gays in the military, of gay adoptions and of same-gender marriage are “trying to take away our humanity by using stereotypes that are wrong.”

Said Murray: “We cannot be satisfied as long as we live in fear of losing our jobs in Spokane and Bellevue, Yakima and Olympia. We cannot be satisfied as long as the majority can use the ballot to vote away the rights of any minority.”