Congress is expected to take up the controversial issues of gay rights and same-sex marriage this year, with gay-rights advocates seeing the best opportunity to advance their agenda in more than a decade.
At least four bills are set to put gay rights at center stage, including a measure to eliminate part of a 1996 law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Hate-crimes legislation is likely to be first on the docket, according to sources, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) set to work with several members’ offices to craft the legislation. Next up is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
Though both measures have passed the House before, this year the legislation has taken on a new urgency because supporters think President Obama would sign them into law, said Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who co-chairs the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Equality Caucus.
“It’s one thing to go through the exercise of passing a bill through the House. It’s another thing to pass it through the House and the Senate and have it signed by the president,” Baldwin said. “This session is not a dress rehearsal for future sessions. If these bills pass, they become law.”
After years of defeats at the hands of the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, backers of same-sex partnerships and gay rights say they are seeing the pace of progress quicken in recent months.
“There is increased attention from some members of Congress [hoping] to find ways to protect and respect same-sex couples,” said Marty Rouse, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign. “There’s more conversations heard on the Hill now.”
Once hate-crimes legislation and ENDA are passed, a measure sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Reps. Baldwin and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) that would provide domestic partner benefits to federal employees will hit the floor. They hope to drop the bill next week.
“This is long overdue and I think this is the year to do right by so many lesbian and gay workers with partners,” Ros-Lehtinen told The Hill. “The federal government is the nation’s largest civilian employer, and it’s about time [gays and lesbians] receive these benefits.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) will offer a measure to strike at the heart of the law that hurts the chances of gay marriage the most, though his bill is considered a long shot.
Nadler will move to eliminate Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that defined marriage as the “legal union between one man and one woman.” Opponents argue this is an attempt to chip away at the controversial law.
“Instead of killing the Defense of Marriage Act with a bang, they plan on killing it with a whimper,” said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council.
Supporters of gay-rights measures are concerned that conservative Democrats will make up a larger bloc of votes than centrist and socially libertarian Republicans who might back the proposals. Baldwin said members of the LGBT caucus have been holding conversations, especially with newer members, and many have been receptive.
“Part of this is generational,” Baldwin said, noting that younger Americans tend to be more accepting of gays and lesbians. “Part of the upside of all these great new members is that many of them are young and they represent their generation’s attitudes.”
House leaders support the measures, but Senate Democratic leadership refused to speculate on when they would be brought up.
President Obama has said he opposes same-sex marriage, but the prospects of domestic partnership legislation at both the state and federal level have improved, according to gay-rights advocates.
In recent years, courts in Connecticut and Massachusetts have ruled in favor of same-sex marriages. Courts in Vermont and New Jersey have required civil unions, while a New York court ordered that the state must recognize out-of-state partnerships.
Marriage or domestic partnership measures are likely to make progress in Maine, Vermont, New York and Washington state early this year, while a similar measure will be introduced in New Jersey’s legislature following the November elections for governor.
Iowa’s Supreme Court is likely to rule on whether same-sex partners should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, a case activists are optimistic about winning.
On the international stage, Obama’s administration has said it would join 66 other countries in signing a United Nations statement calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality, something the Bush administration refused to do.
Even some deep-red states are making moves to end discrimination against gays in employment and housing. Bills are making their way through legislatures in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware, along with states notorious for their social conservatism, like North Dakota and West Virginia.
Opponents of same-sex marriage say initiatives defining marriage as between one man and one woman are going ahead in states like North Carolina, Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin. “It’s a mixture of both offense and defense,” McClusky said.
The majority of voters still oppose full-fledged marriage rights, and constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage have passed in every state in which they’ve reached the ballot, though it took two tries to pass in Arizona.
Most recently, opponents of gay marriage helped pass a proposition in California defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The proposition is currently before the California Supreme Court, where gay-rights advocates are challenging its constitutionality, though they are not optimistic of the judicial outcome.
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