With a vote of 21 to 16, the Rhode Island Senate approved a measure to grant
. . . legal rights to same-sex partners “without the historical and religious meaning associated with the word marriage,” a statement from the Rhode Island General Assembly said.
“We have made great progress in our goal of providing increased rights, benefits and protections for gay and lesbian couples,” [Democratic state Rep. Peter Petrarca, the bill’s sponsor said]
The bill, writes my friend Dale Carpenter
manages to do what nobody else has done: unite supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage. Marriage Equality Rhode Island says it establishes “second-class citizenry.” The National Organization for Marriage says it is “disappointing and dangerous.” Caught in the middle were legislators, including the openly gay head of the state house, and Governor Lincoln Chafee (expected to sign the bill), who predicted this was the most they could do for at least a couple of years.
The New York Times reports that the legislation “was offered as a compromise this spring after Gordon D. Fox, the openly gay speaker of the Democratic-controlled House, said he could not muster enough votes to pass a same-sex marriage bill.” Despite this compromise, we learn in a press release from “Freedom to Marry” that gay marriage advocates are asking the Ocean State’s governor to veto the bill:
. . . Freedom to Marry and the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) sent a letter late yesterday evening to Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee calling on him to veto the civil union bill currently under consideration if it comes to his desk in its present form. The bill contains a provision that would allow religious organizations and their employees to disregard couples’ civil union status, creating unprecedented, onerous and discriminatory hurdles for same-sex couples seeking to take care of one another.
The bill may be imperfect, but that provision answers the objection many people of faith offer to state recognition of same-sex unions. They can’t complain that the state is forcing them to acknowledge unions at odds with their creed. It preserves their freedom while giving benefits to same-sex couples.
This is something to celebrate. The elected legislature of the state with the second highest proportion of Catholics in its population voted to recognize and accord benefits to same-sex unions.
And anyway, so what if the state is not calling the unions “marriages”? Our self-worth shouldn’t be tied up in the word a state uses to define our relationships.
FROM THE COMMENTS: TGC offers:
Marriage Equality Rhode Island says it establishes “second-class citizenry.”
They make themselves “second-class citizens” and they revel in it. Wouldn’t have anything to bitch about or fund raise for if they didn’t.
He’s got a point; they’re the ones saying we’re second-class citizens.
Daniel,
“And anyway, so what if the state is not calling the unions “marriages”? Our self-worth shouldn’t be tied up in the word a state uses to define our relationships.”
Apparently your the minority opinion, Daniel. Or is GLAD and the rest of “Gay Inc” pushing an agenda the non activist LGBT community doesn’t support? Also, from where the religious orgs stand they will continue to be pushed from the public square.
So wait, gay marriage activists are upset that this bill exempts religious organizations? I thought those people were all about the separation of church and state.
Marriage Equality Rhode Island says it establishes “second-class citizenry.”
They make themselves “second-class citizens” and they revel in it. Wouldn’t have anything to bitch about or fund raise for if they didn’t.
Score one for Fred! 🙂
Second-class would actually be several steps up for most of them.
A flawed bill but better than what we have in Virginia, i.e. nada, zip, zilch. It can be fixed later when there are enough votes if necessary. While I personally prefer SSM I’m willing to settle for CUs in some areas for now. I’ve never understood the illogic of those folks who want the “whole enchilada” or nothing at all – daring to speak for everyone in that state to boot.
@John
While we disagree on SSM, I do agree that the ‘all or nothing crowd’ undermines themselves. You can’t legislate acceptance after all.
The_Livewire,
“You can’t legislate acceptance after all.”
I think sometimes people overlook that the definition of “acceptance” and “tolerance” are not the same.
“You can’t legislate acceptance after all.”
True. You could make gay marriage legal in all fifty states and people will still ridicule gay couples. Face it, two queens fighting about a China pattern is funny. I don’t care who you are.
Getting bureaucratic approval of gay relationships can’t paper over the deep, deep dysfunction within gay culture.
Yes, there is dysfunction on the heterosexual side as well (Thank you, 1960s), but this dysfunction tends to be looked at as a problem in need of a remedy; not a cultural attribute to be celebrated.
Take the civil unions and run…and thank the nice Legislature and Governor on the way out the door.
Frankly, I’m amazed at the speed and breadth of the social and legal acceptance of gay marriage. I always figured that we’d have fairly-comprehensive civil unions nationwide for several generations at-least before they began to morph into state-recognized “marriages”, if ever. Fifteen years ago if asked I would have posited that by 2025 we might have civil unions in half the states, but no civil SSM anywhere. And Federally-recognized across-the-board civil unions by 2045.
And I still think that it would be a wiser strategy for the National-level activists to find allies for a Federal, nation-wide civil unions law that deals with federal benefits and interstate family law openly-acknowledging that it’s about equal protections and obligations, and not marriage.
Sociologically, I just not convinced that SSM and traditional-norm marriage are “the same”. They’re still different on so many levels culturally.
True.
Some gays accept that religious views exist, but they don’t tolerate them. Some gays don’t tolerate plural marriage nor do they accept that civil unions open the doors of logic and legal parity in permitting them.
Civil unions create a way for gays to get the state imposed inequalities in partnership addressed. All citizens will have to accept the law. The “tolerance” here escapes me. Are we concerned that the law does not make people “like” the underlying facts of civil unions?
Are we saying that civil unions don’t punish people who dislike homosexuality? What is the face of the “tolerance” police?
To pick up on VtheK, if I video two queens fighting over a china pattern and post it to You Tube, can you accept it? Or have I pushed your tolerance button?
Vile. (of them)
I think this just shows how selfish some on the Gay Left are. RI could’ve not given them anything but the legislature decided to allow some benefits for the time being and they can’t appreciate that. And what about the gays who don’t want to get married? For them this is great because they can get the legal benefits that they want without being forced to get a marriage license. But of course some people don’t think about that.
This is like blacks telling President Eisenhower to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1957, just because it wasn’t as strong as they’d have liked it.
I view civil unions to be better than nothing. Here in Kansas the constitution does not allow any union other than a marriage between a man and a woman. Thus, I would view any sort of recognition of same-sex relationships in this state to certainly be better than the status quo. Although, I have always thought of marriage as the ultimate goal due to the possibility of having a separate-but-(not)equal status created by the existence both full civil unions and traditional marriage.
Despite what I have said above, I am not the type to say that I am a second class citizen because of my sexual orientation. Constantly viewing yourself as a victim is no way to live your life. As a citizen of the United States I am still entitled to the same rights as any other citizen, and a lack of recognition of same-sex relationships will not make the love between me and my man any less significant.
I think it’s asinine for same-sex marriage advocates to throw this bill back in the faces of the legislature and say, “It’s not good enough!”. It’s a first step and it’s a foot in the door and it’s a hell of a lot better than what they have now, so they should take it, and keep working toward full marriage equality. No one says they have to just stop here and be satisfied with this. I support same-sex couples getting full marriage recognition, but you have to start somewhere and this is a jumping off point that the LGBT community can build on in RI.
I do see, however how the religious provision written into the law can be a problem. In states that allow same-sex marriage, most of those bills included provisions to exempt religious institutions & religious clergy from being compelled to perform marriages for same-sex couples, which was totally fine, because clergy and churches can already decline to perform marriages to couples based on their own religious criteria-can’t get married by a Catholic priest if you aren’t a Catholic, can’t be married in a Mormon church if you are not a Mormon, etc. This provision in the bill however, basically says that if two people of the same sex being in a civil union upsets someone’s religious sensibilities they can just basically pretend that legal union doesn’t exist. It’s not protecting the rights of clergy/churches not to be forced into performing unions, it’s saying that if you are in a car accident & end up in a Catholic hospital & your partner (that you are legally joined to in a civil partnership) shows up at the ER, they can just pretend you have no legal right to see your partner. THAT, is a problem, because what is the point of passing a bill to give same-sex couples these protections if they can just be disregarded by anyone that doesn’t approve of same-sex unions? Seems like it kind of defeats the purpose of the bill.
It’s not totally clear to me that this is the case — though, honestly, I’m not sure one way or another.
There’s currently an ongoing discussion of this at Volokh Conspiracy, and someone has posted the text of the bill’s “religious exemptions” section:
It’s the “treat as valid” language from (3) that makes a lot of people uneasy — what does “treat as valid” actually mean in practice?
Is it possible for a religious organization such as a Catholic hospital to recognize a CU as legally binding (e.g., for purposes of patient visitation) without implicitly bestowing validity on the CU? Or is the assumption that honoring the legality of a CU would automatically be tantamount to “treating it as valid”?
(P.S. Note that valid is a “term-of-art” in Catholic theology, so it’s possible that legislators in heavily Catholic RI were using “valid” in an idiosyncratic way that was slightly different from how most secular people would interpret the term.)
Thank you Marriage Equality Rhode Island, Freedom to Marry, GLAD, et al for making my point.
http://www.gaypatriot.net/2011/06/29/hyperventilating-on-gay-marriage-part-one/
Indeed. Where’s the “compromise” liberals always whine about when they’re in the minority?
I can’t believe what I read in this article from RI state Senator Donna Nesselbush:”While civil unions do provide valuable rights, we cannot confuse rights with equality.” WHAT?!
Read more: Rhode Island Lawmakers Pass Bill Approving Civil Unions for Gay Couples http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpps/news/ri-lawmakers-pass-bill-approving-civil-unions-for-gay-couples-dpgonc-20110630-fc_13919070#ixzz1Qorng5Jq
Language is just that, language.
Suppose I grew up in a society where a word other than “marriage was used to describe monogamous opposite-sex unions. Would I feel diminished somehow? Of course not. It would never occur to me, if I had grown up in such a society, to associate the word “marriage” with a monogamous opposite-sex union.
In general, governments should use legal definitions that closely track the customary meaning of words; otherwise, one could have absurd results like people being guilty of DUI merely for being passed out drunk in the back seat of a car, even without evidence that there was an attempt to drive the car.