House lawmakers are expected to debate three bills today touching on same-sex unions. One bill before the House Judiciary Committee would permit gay couples to get married in Rhode Island.
Another would set up civil unions for same-sax partners. The third proposal would also create a civil union system but define marriage as a partnership between a man and a woman.
Nobody's terribly optimistic about the outcome, though. There was testimony over this issue before the House last Thursday, and even the sponsor didn't think it would pass.
Supporters of same-sex marriage stepped up, one by one, to testify at the State House yesterday in what has become, for them, a frustrating annual ritual: advocating for a bill that has virtually no chance of passing.
Even the bill's sponsor admitted as much in her remarks at the hearing's end. "I believe fervently that this law will pass," said Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence, "but it will take more time for that to occur."
There were very few people actually testifying against the bill, but opponents claimed that didn't mean much:
During the sometimes-adversarial two-hour hearing, only two people spoke against legalizing same-sex marriage. However, included in committee members' packets of written testimony on the bill were copies of e-mails from 10 Rhode Island residents who wrote in to oppose the measure. Sen. Leo R. Blais, R-Coventry, told fellow Senate Judiciary Committee members: "Don't be misled for a microsecond" by the ratio of supporters to opponents in the room.
Blais also is sponsoring a bill to specifically make same-sex marriages illegal in Rhode Island, and claimed his bill would pass if put on the ballot before voters.
Although....
Jenn Steinfeld, director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, challenged the notion that the opponents of legalizing same-sex marriage are more numerous than supporters. She cited the advocacy group's own 2006 opinion poll findings, which were that 45 percent of Rhode Island voters support same-sex marriage and 39 percent oppose it, and a Rasmussen Reports poll with similar findings.
That doesn't necessarily mean much, though. As this editorial puts it,
Blais took it a step further, asserting that, if a DOMA bill were presented to the Rhode Island electorate for a referendum, "it would pass overwhelmingly."
If Blais were talking about a nationwide referendum, he would without question be correct. As far as Rhode Island is concerned, I'm not sure, but he may be right here as well.
It would probably depend, as it almost always does, on how the question was worded.
If the question was worded: "Should the word marriage be defined, as is it has been through the ages, as the legal union of one man and one woman," that would probably pass easily.
But if the ballot question read: "Should same-sex couples who wish to enter a committed relationship be allowed to do so, with all the rights, prerogatives and privileges of opposite-sex couples," that would probably pass, too.
You could even ask those questions one after the other and I think they would both pass. People wouldn't even recognize the dissonance.
Interestingly, it seems a lot of people were using religious freedom to argue in favor of same-sex marriage:
Many who testified based their arguments on religious freedom. They said more than 100 of the state's religious leaders had signed a letter supporting Perry's bill, and made pointed references to the state's dominant Roman Catholic population. (The Diocese of Providence opposes the measure.)
"In this state, founded by Roger Williams as a community open to religious diversity, we expect the individuals entrusted with civic authority will not impose their own religious beliefs on anyone, nor impose one religious belief on everyone," said the Rev. Eugene T. Dyszlewski, pastor at the Riverside Congregational Church in East Providence.
Countered Blais: "You are certainly entitled to believe what you want to believe. It does not mean that we have to embody those beliefs in state statute."
As Mr. Baron notes in his editorial, Blais doesn't "even recognize the dissonance" in that statement. He apparently can't figure out that's exactly what he's trying to do.
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