http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage7sep07,0,3784014.story?track=tottext
Legislature OKs Gay Marriage
Assembly action sends the bill to the governor, who has signaled that he
will veto the measure.
By Nancy Vogel
Times Staff Writer
September
7, 2005, Los Angeles Times
SACRAMENTO — The California Legislature made history Tuesday as
the Assembly passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.
With no votes
to spare, California's lawmakers became the first in the United States to act
without a court order to sanction gay marriages. The measure was approved after
three Democratic lawmakers who abstained on a similar proposal that failed in
June changed their minds under intense lobbying by bill author Assemblyman Mark
Leno (D-San Francisco) and gay and civil rights activists.
No Republicans
voted in favor of the bill. Forty-one of the Assembly's 47 Democrats voted yes;
four Democrats voted "no," and two abstained.
The bill, which would
change California's legal definition of marriage from "a civil contract between
a man and a woman" to a "civil contract between two persons," now goes to Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has signaled that he will veto it.
Tuesday's
vote came after 23 lawmakers addressed the chamber, many of them focusing on the
historic element of their action, others relating intensely personal
stories.
In a moment of high drama, with dozens of gay rights supporters
watching from the gallery, Simon Salinas (D-Salinas) hesitated for several
seconds as the tally hung at 40 "ayes" — one short of passage. Then, having
promised Leno months ago that he would not let the bill fail, Salinas pressed
the "aye" button on his desk, making the final vote 41-35.
Those seconds
"seemed like an eternity," said Mark Guzman of El Dorado Hills, as he and his
partner of 14 years, J. Scott Coatsworth, celebrated in the Capitol rotunda
after the voting.
In addition to Salinas, Assembly members Tom Umberg of
Anaheim and Gloria Negrete-McLeod of Chino provided key votes. Assemblyman
Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton), who had missed the floor vote in June, also helped
the bill prevail.
Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood) — one of the
lawmakers who abstained in June, when Leno's bill fell four votes short —
withheld his vote again Tuesday. Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City)
abstained after having voted "no" in June. Assemblyman Joe Baca Jr. (D-Rialto)
also abstained Tuesday.
Two of the lawmakers who switched their votes
from abstain to "aye" said in floor speeches that they were glad for another
chance.
Umberg elicited applause and whoops in the otherwise hushed
chamber when he described why he had changed his mind. He said he had been
"cajoled, been harassed, been harangued and been threatened" by friends over the
issue.
"This is one of those times when history looks upon us to see
where we are," Umberg said. "Ten years from now, there are a handful of issues
that history will record where we stood, and this is one of those
issues.
"History will record whether we pushed a bit, took the lead to
encourage tolerance, to encourage equality to encourage fairness," he
said.
"The constituency I'm concerned about is a very small one," said
Umberg, "and that's the constituency of my three children, should they decide to
look back on my record c and reflect on where I was when we could make a
difference."
Negrete-McLeod similarly said she regretted abstaining in
June.
Some Republicans dismissed the historic significance of the vote
and said gay marriage is not an issue of civil rights. Others criticized Leno
for reviving the bill after the June defeat and called gay marriage
immoral.
"The institution of marriage transcends political fads," said
Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta). "We are talking about an institution that
has been defined for thousands of years c and we are being asked to engage in a
great social experiment."
The fight over same-sex marriage will now shift
to the governor's office — and to the courts and perhaps the ballot box. A case
testing the legality of gay marriage is moving toward the state Supreme Court,
and opponents of same-sex marriage are trying to qualify two initiatives to ban
the practice for the ballot next year.
Leno characterized gay marriage as
the most important civil rights issue of the 21st century. He enlisted Dolores
Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, and Alice Huffman,
California president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored
People, to help him lobby undecided lawmakers.
Huerta said she spoke to
Salinas last week and "went back to our old culture, the Latino
culture."
"Respecting other people's rights is peace," she said.
"Respecting other people's rights to marry who they want is a constitutional
right, it's a human right and it's a privacy right. I said to Simon, 'You've got
to be a leader. c You've got to have courage.' "
Foes of same-sex
marriage call Leno's bill unconstitutional, saying it overturns what citizens
put into law five years ago when they passed Proposition 22 with 61% of the
vote. That initiative said that only marriage between a man and a woman was
valid and recognized in California.
"The only word I can see here is
prostitution," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and
Families. "Instead of obeying the voters and the Constitution, the Democratic
politicians have prostituted themselves to the homosexual marriage agenda. It's
not gay, it's bad."
After Leno's bill failed in June, he inserted the
gay-marriage legislation into a measure about marine research that was pending
in the Senate. That bill, AB 849, cleared the upper house Thursday, also with
the minimum number of votes necessary.
Leno said he is optimistic that
Schwarzenegger has an open mind on his bill, which the governor has until Oct. 9
to veto or sign. The assemblyman noted that public opinion on gay marriage is
evenly split, 46% to 46%, in the state based on a recent poll by the Public
Policy Institute of California.
"I believe this is a governor who at his
core is a libertarian on issues of social matters," Leno said, "and that he is
very fair-minded. I think he also takes the longer, rather than shorter, view of
history."
After the vote, Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson
said: "The people spoke when they passed Proposition 22. The issue subsequently
went to the courts. The governor believes the courts are the correct venue for
this decision to be made. He will uphold whatever decision the court
renders."
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Same-sex
marriage
California could become the second state permitting same-sex
marriages.
In other states:
• Massachusetts — Same-sex
marriage legalized by court decision
• Connecticut — Civil unions
legalized by legislation
• Vermont — Civil unions legalized by
legislation
In other countries:
• Same-sex marriage is legal
in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Canada
Source: Times reporting