Locke Favors Civil Unions Only

March 19, 2004

An ebullient Mary Li, a Multnomah County employee, held up the very first certificate — showing her and her partner’s name under the Oregon seal.

“I can’t describe how great it feels,” Li said.

Li tied the knot in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, despite Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s warnings that the same-sex marriages may be illegal. He stressed that Oregon’s marriage statute, passed in 1863, needs to be read within its historical context. However, Multnomah County commissioners issued the state’s first marriage licenses to same-sex couples on March 3 after determining the state constitution required them to do so.

In neighboring Washington state, Gov. Gary Locke says he opposes gay marriage but favors civil unions that would give homosexual couples many of the same rights and responsibilities.

The Democratic governor said March 3 in Olympia, Wash., that he also opposes the constitutional amendment option backed by President Bush to enshrine a gay marriage ban in the U.S. Constitution.

Washington state lawmakers in 1998 passed a “Defense of Marriage Act” to make Washington one of 38 states defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Locke vetoed the law, but lawmakers overrode the veto.

“The law in the state of Washington, through various court decisions going back several decades, makes it very clear that marriage … is between a man and a woman, and that was affirmed by an act of the Legislature several years ago,” Locke said.

“I do not support same-sex marriages, but I do believe we should provide an opportunity or a legal mechanism by which gay and lesbian couples can get virtually the same legal rights as those who are married …

“Those loving couples deserve to have those same privileges and responsibilities. I support a way in which we can confer legal status, legal privileges that married couples have, but the law in the state of Washington does not allow marriage between anyone but a man and a woman,” Locke said.

Rep. Ed Murray (D-Seattle) one of four openly gay men in the state House, said developments around the country are forcing Washington’s gay community to step up a timeline for activism on the marriage question.

Mayors and county officials in New York and California have allowed gay marriages, including thousands in San Francisco, which started the wedding march Feb. 12. However, late last week, the California Supreme Court halted issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court is reviewing the licenses of more than 4,000 couples already married in San Francisco.

Washington residents are rather tolerant and likely wouldn’t support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, Murray said.

Asked directly if he could imagine Washington state lawmakers ever ratifying an amendment such as Bush suggests, if one were to pass Congress, he said: “All it takes to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a simple majority of both houses. That worries me.”

Jamie Pedersen, a Seattle lawyer who is co-chairman of Lambda Legal, the country’s largest legal organization for gay civil rights, said he’s pleased the nation has begun discussing the marriage issue.

“It’s only a matter of time before more and more places start issuing marriage licenses, before people start realizing Gavin Newsom didn’t turn into a pillar of salt, that God didn’t rain down fire on New Paltz [N.Y.] or Portland, and that heterosexual people haven’t started getting divorced,” Pedersen said.

Elaine Kraft, a spokeswoman for King County Executive Ron Sims, said Washington’s most populous county, which includes Seattle, wouldn’t be following Multnomah County’s lead because Washington law is more specific than Oregon law, and Sims will uphold it.

“That’s what he’ll do, even though he disagrees,” Kraft said. “He supports marriage between two loving, committed adults, period.”

Rick Forcier of the Washington chapter of the Christian Coalition said his members are “more frightened than aghast” at the gay marriages.

“It’s anarchy,” he said. “We seem to have lost the rule of law. It’s very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey.”

Forcier said he doesn’t see any real distinction between same-sex marriage and civil unions.

Jeff Kemp, a former Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers football star who heads Families Northwest, a Bellevue, Ore.-based group that promotes traditional marriage, said the stampede toward gay marriage is troublesome.

The marriages in San Francisco, Multnomah County and elsewhere are being authorized by the courts or by local officials who are using personal opinion, rather than the democratic process, as authority, he said.

“The changing of the definition of marriage is the issue before us, and this has long-term implications, particularly for kids, who are ideally born into a married family with a mom and a dad.”

Locke Favors Civil Unions Only

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