Senate committee revives bill to legalize gay marriage
Brian Melley, Associated Press
July 13, 2005

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- The quest to legalize gay marriage was revived by a Senate committee that approved the measure that was slipped into a fisheries research bill after it failed in the state Assembly.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 4-1 Tuesday in favor of the bill that mirrors one that fell four votes shy last month in the Assembly.

The measure by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, one of six openly gay members of the Legislature, would make California's marriage laws gender-neutral as the issue is headed for the state's highest court.

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, who said she was speaking in support of the bill as a lesbian and not as a senator, said the bill reflects the civil rights issue of the day.

"Our community's in the middle of the griddle and I'm proud of it," Kuehl said.

Opponent Randy Thomasson, who has proposed a constitutional amendment for next year's ballot that would outlaw gay marriage and remove most of the benefits of domestic partnerships, said the bill smacked of an abuse of process.

"This is really a no-brainer," Thomasson testified. "It's sad when it was defeated in one house it was reincarnated here."

Leno was able to keep the issue alive by persuading another lawmaker to let him gut and amend a bill that passed the Assembly that aimed to collect information from fisherman. He replaced it with the language from his gay marriage bill. He defended the move by saying his bill had already passed Assembly committees and would now face public votes in the Senate.

"I understand there is at times a nefarious reputation to the gut and amend process," Leno said. "That is, rightfully, when it is used at the end of the session, sometimes in the dark of the night when public hearings are short circuited. Nothing could be further from the truth with this bill."

In a symbolic gesture Monday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to support the bill, though Councilmen Greig Smith and Bernard Parks, the former city police chief, left the chambers before their colleagues brought up the measure.

Leno's bill would amend the state family code to define marriage between "two persons" instead of between a man and a woman. It faces a vote in another Senate committee as soon as next month. If the full Senate passes the bill, it would be the first legislative body in the nation to approve a gay marriage bill.

It took a court order last year for Massachusetts to become the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

Leno said he still would need to round up three votes in the Assembly if it makes it through the Senate. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, has not taken a stand on the bill, but has said voters or judges, not lawmakers, should make such social changes.

Republican opponents have argued that the issue was decided five years ago by state voters who approved a ballot initiative prohibiting the state from recognizing same-sex marriages.

However, a state judge in San Francisco ruled in March that state laws prohibiting gays from marrying are unconstitutional and the issue is likely to end up before the California Supreme Court in the next year.

While representatives of several civil rights groups spoke in favor of the bill, hundreds of opponents crowded in a Capitol hallway waiting for their turn to speak against it. Scores of the bill's foes, many from the Russian and Ukrainian communities in the Sacramento metropolitan area, added their voices in opposition, including one man who addressed the committee entirely in his native tongue.