A California Assembly Committee on party-line 10 - 4 votes March 28 greenlighted three bills to expand the rights of registered partners, despite the looming shadow of Proposition 22's landslide victory just three weeks before. The campaign for that ballot initiative to deny legal recognition to same-gender marriages another state may someday perform was careful to deny any intent to limit the rights of domestic partners, but groups testifying in opposition to the current bills took a different stand. With the legislative session just getting underway this week, one of the domestic partner bills will go right to the floor for a vote by the full Assembly, while the other two each move to other committees.

Legislation dictated by Governor Gray Davis (D) and carried by lesbian Assemblymember Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) that went into effect January 1 allows same-gender couples and heterosexual couples aged 62 and up to register their relationship with the Secretary of State; some 2,800 couples have registered so far, in a state estimated to have about 35,000 gay and lesbian couples. The current certification allows for hospital visitation and qualifies state workers to receive spousal health benefits. This was as far as the governor was willing to go in 1999 toward recognizing gay and lesbian couples, and he currently has no position on the several moves this year to expand that recognition. While Democrats hold a majority in both houses and the full Senate is expected to give its approval to the bills, they must first pass on the Assembly floor, where last year several swing votes fell to intensive anti-gay campaigning both in the legislature and in home districts.

The three measures passed by the Assembly Judiciary Committee are authored by its chair lesbian Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), AB 2211; by Assemblymember Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), AB 2047; and by Assembly Majority Whip Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), AB 1990. Romero's bill would add domestic partners to the definition of "family member" for purposes of making medical decisions for an incapacitated partner. Steinberg's bill would allow a surviving domestic partner to inherit from a deceased partner in the absence of a will and to serve as administrator for the deceased's estate.

Kuehl's bill has a number of different provisions: revising the statutory will form to include domestic partners; providing conservatorship rights; authorizing domestic partners to make decisions regarding autopsies and funeral arrangements; giving domestic partners the same legal standing as spouses to sue for wrongful death of a partner and for negligent infliction of emotional distress; and, most controversially, extending the rights of California domestic partnerships to those who have registered their partnership elsewhere.

A fourth bill to allow domestic partners to decide on organ donations in event of a partner's death will be introduced by Migden this week.

The Testimony
Romero told the Committee, "We still live in a society in which there are certain taboos and phobias about people who choose a lifestyle that might be different from our own. This is not a bill about morality. It is not a bill about redefining marriage."

Assemblymember George House (R-Hughson) said, "No, these bills aren't marriage. I can even agree with some of the intent of fairness. But it does move in the direction of [domestic partnerships] as equals, if not the actuality, of marriage." The other three Republican Assemblymembers who voted against the bills are committee vice chair Dick Ackerman (Fullerton), Robert Pacheco (Walnut) and Tom McClintock (Simi Valley). (Republican Patricia Bates of Laguna Niguel did not vote.)

Marriage was also the concern of those lobbying against the bills. Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition wrote in a letter, "Once all the rights currently afforded to those relationships of the opposite sex are granted to those of the same sex, the concept of marriage will have lost its meaning, purpose and legitimacy." The Committee on Moral Concerns is also opposing the bills.

Randy Thomasson, executive director of Campaign for California Families, told the Committee, "Don't injure the definition of family. ... It is very arguable this will bring homosexual marriage to California." He warned particularly that with Kuehl's bill, California couples would register their partnerships in Vermont "and wage war in the courts to pressure for full benefits as far as they can go."

Kuehl responded that her bill "doesn't allow any benefits over and above what we would be creating here in California for any domestic partners from out of state."

The other opposition argument was that the measures were not necessary. Sacramento attorney Steven Burlingham said couples could achieve the same effects through durable powers of attorney and wills, and said, "It's not asking too much to merely check a box and sign a form, particularly when we're asking people to register as domestic partners."

But one couple told the San Jose Mercury News that doing those papers cost them $2,000, and there's no guarantee that a will won't be challenged in court by legally recognized relatives. Sacramento estate attorney Jane Pearce told the Committee that about one-fifth of her clients are gays and lesbians and that "They're the lucky ones -- lucky they have knowledge that planning is essential for them to protect their last wishes. ... I had a client who was barred from attending the funeral of his partner because his partner's parents obtained a restraining order to keep him away. They had been together for seven years."

Sacramento lesbian Gaynell Johnson, a member of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality (CAPE) which is actively lobbying for all three bills, described to the Committee her personal experience nine years ago of being unconscious at home due to a high fever from pneumonia -- and her physician refusing even to speak with her partner on the phone about her condition. She said, "My partner should not have had to be put in that situation. These are basic human rights. It's not a matter of my sexuality. It's a matter of being human."

Migden said, "These are the basic rights that most California families take for granted. Government must treat domestic partners in committed, loving relationships with the same dignity and sensitivity as other families in times of death and crisis."