Clash over domestic partnerships turns to next Senate committee

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Cisco McSorley presents his bill Wednesday.

SANTA FE — The domestic partnership bill cleared its first Senate panel Wednesday.

Now comes a stiffer test. The Senate Judiciary Committee, where the legislation died last year, and a vote that could come as early as today.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, said Wednesday night that unlike last year he had enough votes to push the bill through his committee.

If that happens, the bill could go before the entire Senate for a floor vote as soon as next week.

Advocates say that after three years of lobbying this year represents the best shot for New Mexico to become the first state in the middle of the U.S. to extend many of the same rights enjoyed by married couples to same-sex couples, which is what domestic partnerships would do.

With the exception of Hawaii, all the states that recognize same sex marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are on the East Coast or West Coast (pdf).

But advocates also have learned not to fall to the temptation of overconfidence, even if the House and Senate have added several progressive lawmakers to their ranks this year.

A signal of the potential obstacles ahead came Wednesday when the Senate Public Affairs Committee, a panel viewed as very friendly by advocates, approved the domestic partnerships bill by a slim 5-4 vote.

Domestic partnerships, whether lawmakers like it or not, stands in the middle of the clash of two big ideas — equal rights vs. traditional values.

And hanging over that clash, like a screaming neon sign, is the word “marriage,” and how to define it.

The pull and tug between those two ideas summed up the core of Wednesday’s debate between supporters and opponents who showed up to watch a joint meeting of the Senate Public Affairs and Senate Judiciary committees.

“It’s a step toward marriage. If this passes, we start muddying the waters,” said Josh Crawford, a northern New Mexican and domestic partnerships opponent.

Crawford was one of hundreds of opponents who crowded the gallery overlooking the Senate chamber Wednesday to watch state lawmakers take testimony from the bill’s supporters and opponents.

Crawford had traveled 40 minutes to the Capitol. His hair pulled back into a ponytail, Crawford said he bore no ill will toward gay and lesbian couples. But granting the equivalent of marriage to them goes against the Bible, and thousands of years of human culture, he said.

A few feet away from Crawford stood Patricia Anders of Albuquerque. The stylishly dressed attorney represented a lonely outpost of support for domestic partnerships in the Senate gallery. She was one of the few advocates who had found a spot. Opponents began filling the gallery several hours before the hearing, forcing most of the bill’s supporters to stand at the back of the Senate chamber or to mill around the lobbies immediately outside the gallery.

Surrounded by people with whom she disagreed, Anders grew emotional at the thought of how she and her “wife” don’t receive equal treatment under New Mexico’s laws.

Anders moved to New Mexico from Massachusetts, where four years ago she married her partner. Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to recognize same sex marriages. They are legally wed in Massachusetts, but not in New Mexico. And that hurts, she said.

Two supporters of domestic partnerships testified in front of a joint committee meeting Wednesday.

“I was surprised when I walked in here,” Anders said as tears welled up in her eyes. “I didn’t expect to be emotional but it is hard coming to a state that legally treats certain people so unfairly.”

She continued, “It’s shocking to me that Britney Spears can go to Las Vegas and marry someone she has known for five minutes and get protections for her and this person she has just met. But other couples and families are unequal even though they have been in long-term committed relationship to get those benefits.”

Supporters stress that domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage, or even a step in that direction.

Even if domestic partnerships are recognized, they would unlock only rights under state law. Same-sex couples — and unmarried straight couples in a committed relationship — who enter into domestic partnerships would not see hundreds of federal rights unlocked to them, as they are for married couples.

Under the domestic partnerships legislation, individuals would be able to enjoy medical coverage through their partner’s health insurance plan and would have the right to visit a partner in a hospital. They could also take family medical leave to care for a partner who is ill and earned property rights in a partners’ pension and inheritance rights.

But the not-the-same-as-marriage argument doesn’t sway opponents, who see domestic partnerships as a Trojan Horse. The thinking goes, opponents said, if the state legally recognizes domestic partnerships someone could legally challenge the institution on the grounds that it is an unequal and pale version of marriage.

That is what occurred last year in Connecticut, which joined Massachusetts as the only other state to recognize same-sex marriage. (California briefly recognized same sex marriage after the state’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on it. California voters, however, approved a proposition in November that banned same sex marriages.)

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the state’s civil unions law, passed in 2005, was discriminatory and set up an unequal treatment under the law.

Supporters of following the same long-term legal strategy, opponents say.

But supporters say this isn’t so.

“The only step in the process that we are looking at right now is a domestic partnerships,” said Marshall Martinez, who served nearly six years on the board of Equality New Mexico, the organization spearheading the push for domestic partnerships. “That’s not to say that someone gets domestically partnered and they realize they can’t file joint returns, and that angers them enough to file a lawsuit. It’s potentially likely. The reality is we pass domestic partnerships and we get the most and the best for right now.”

Getting domestic partnerships through both chambers won’t be easy, of course. While the legislation died in the Senate last year, the House of Representatives barely passed it by a vote of 33-31.

But everyone is watching the Senate closely, at least for now.

And the Judiciary Committee vote likely is a good barometer for the bill.

The time of the meeting is unclear, McSorley said. It could be Thursday or Friday because he’s trying to accommodate a senator who is absent because of a death in the family.

“I have assured both sides” that the meeting won’t occur without that senator, McSorley said Wednesday night.