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	<h1 class="sechead">Marriage fight returns to Capitol, courts</h1>
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	  Published 12/07/2006	 </div>

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	  <h3 class="byline">by Matthew S. Bajko </h3> 	   	 </p>

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		<tr><td align="left"><img src="http://ebar.com/images/articles/01_Marriage_49.jpg" width="300px"></td></tr><tr><td><div class="article_caption_lrg">Assemblyman Mark Leno, right, prepares to submit his
gender-neutral marriage bill to Larry Murman, assistant chief clerk, left, and
Pam Cavileer, chief assistant clerk. Photo: Bill Wilson

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	 <p>m.bajko@ebar.com</p>

<p>The fight over same-sex marriage returned to the Statehouse
and courts this week as legislators reconvened in Sacramento and lawyers filed
briefs urging the state Supreme Court to address whether gay and lesbian
couples deserve the right to marry.</p>

<p>Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) is hoping he doesn't
strike out this year in his third attempt to pass a gay marriage bill. At 1:30
p.m. Monday, December 4, Leno formally submitted to the Assembly clerk the
bill, now designated as AB43 and officially known as the Religious Freedom and
Civil Marriage Protection Act. The bill would require the state to offer
gender-neutral marriage licenses to couples. </p>

<p>&quot;It has symbolic value to it, in that, this is a top
priority bill, not only for my office and our LGBT legislative caucus, but also
for the Democratic leadership,&quot; Leno said, when asked why he introduced
the bill on the first day of the new legislative session. </p>

<p>The bill is nearly identical to the one Leno brought forth
in 2005. A legislative bait and switch revived the bill in the Senate that
year, and an arm-twisting battle in the Assembly mustered up enough votes to
pass it, but the bill died at the hands of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who
vetoed it that fall. </p>

<p>Leno purposefully waited until after the 2006 elections to
bring the bill back, and he faces a polar opposite challenge in sending it back
to the governor in 2007. The new class of Democratic lawmakers in the Assembly
overwhelmingly supports the bill, with 44 lawmakers already pledging to vote
for it. A bill needs 41 votes to pass out of the lower chamber.</p>

<p>The fight for votes will take place in the Senate, where
Leno is short by one the 21 votes he needs to ensure passage. Leno and same-sex
marriage advocates are focusing on three Democratic senators from Southern
California to find the last vote they need. </p>

<p>&quot;I would doubt that one vote in the Senate won't be
found,&quot; said Leno.</p>

<p>The prime target of marriage advocates is newly installed
Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), a former assemblyman from Santa Ana who has
stated publicly he supports civil unions and has never received the backing of
Equality California, the state's LGBT advocacy group. Correa replaced termed
out Senator Joe Dunn, a backer of the marriage bill. </p>

<p>&quot;He is not currently formally in support of marriage
equality. We hope we can get him there,&quot; said Leno, who donated $3,300,
the maximum allowed, to Correa's Senate campaign. </p>

<p>Correa, the first Latino senator from Orange County, voted
against an equal benefits bill and was the only Democrat in the Assembly not to
vote for a 2004 resolution against a federal marriage amendment. He did give
the domestic partner bill AB205 the 41st vote it needed for passage and received
strong LGBT support in his razor-thin win in his Senate race this year. </p>

<p>Advocates said Correa should not fear voting for the
marriage bill would ruin his political career. Other Orange County-area
lawmakers supportive of marriage equality have gone on to win re-election. </p>

<p>&quot;We showed it doesn't negatively affect him,&quot; said
Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors, whose organization is a lead
sponsor of Leno's bill. &quot;Lou Correa, when needed, has been the 41st vote.
He has supported us when we really need him and his vote will make the
difference.&quot;</p>

<p>Other Democratic senators in the cross hairs of marriage
advocates are Jack Scott from Pasadena and Denise Ducheney from San Diego. Both
abstained from voting on the bill in 2005 but have strong records of voting for
LGBT bills. </p>

<p>&quot;We are doing work in those districts, in particular,
to show the members they have a lot of support in their districts for marriage
equality,&quot; said Kors, who noted seven EQCA board members live in
Ducheney's district. </p>

<p>Boosting the lobbying efforts, Senate Pro Tem Don Perata
(D-Oakland) is now a co-author of this year's bill and he named out lesbian
Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) as Democratic Caucus chair, a position
in which Migden will count votes on bills, especially those backed by the
Democratic leadership. </p>

<p>&quot;Having both the speaker of the Assembly [Fabian Nunez
(D-Los Angeles)] and president of the Senate being supportive of the marriage
bill bodes very well for its prospects in the legislature,&quot; said Kors.
&quot;[Migden] will be in charge of making sure caucus members are supportive
of key bills that the Democrats in the legislature are pushing, that includes
bills that impact the LGBT community.&quot;</p>

<p>In an e-mail response, a spokesman for Migden wrote, &quot;Senator
Migden has long been recognized as an integral part of the Senate's Democratic
leadership. Regardless of her title, her Senate colleagues listen to her
because they respect the intelligence, energy and dedication she brings to
tackling California's problems and creating strong public policy to benefit the
state's residents. Like always, she will work hard to ensure both the marriage
and domestic partnership equality bills [see story, page 1] are approved by the
Senate.&quot;</p>

<p>There's another advantage in pressuring lawmakers to support
the bill &#8211; Leno is chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and
newly installed Legislative LGBT Caucus Chair Assemblyman John Laird (D-Santa
Cruz) chairs the budget committee. The Legislature's first out gay male
lawmakers now hold powerful sway over what legislators' bills get funded
&#8211; a tool they can use to muster up votes for LGBT bills.</p>

<p>Having out lawmakers in such powerful posts, said Kors,
&quot;gives our community great power in the legislature.&quot;</p>

<p>The legislative maneuvering could all be for naught, since
the governor has not indicated any change in his position on the issue.
Nonetheless, backers of Leno's bill say reviving the marriage equality fight is
not a futile exercise. </p>

<p>They point to several key factors that could help sway Schwarzenegger
to switch stances, including both his and his wife's current chiefs of staff
are members of the LGBT community, something that wasn't true in 2005, and two
Republican-appointed appellate court judges ruled this year that it is up to
the legislature to decide the marriage issue. The Republican governor had said
in his veto statement that the courts (or the people) should decide the issue.</p>

<p>&quot;It is always going to come down to the governor,&quot;
said LGBT Community Center Executive Director Thom Lynch. &quot;I hope the
governor changes his mind and does what he said in the past, which was to leave
things to the legislature to decide. I am hoping his re-election and the
tactics he used to get re-elected, which was to move to the center, allows him
some leeway to change his mind again.&quot;</p>

<p>As a courtesy, Leno informed the governor's office prior to
Monday that he was reintroducing his bill. He has spoken to Susan Kennedy,
Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, about the bill, but declined to disclose the
particulars of the talks. However, Leno did say he has not discounted the
possibility of seeing the governor sign the bill next year.</p>

<p>&quot;I don't care to conjecture as to how that will play,
but certainly, it is always beneficial to have like-minded and friendly voices
inside the governor's office,&quot; said Leno. &quot;I don't think anyone can
honestly say or claim the governor is inflexible relative to positions he takes
on issues. He has shown himself many times to have an open mind, take in more
information and change his position 180 degrees.&quot;</p>

<p>Log Cabin California Director James Vaughn said he intends
to both be in Sacramento to advocate for the bill when it is debated in
February, as well as lobby the governor and his staff to support the bill. </p>

<p>&quot;I don't think it is a lost cause. Log Cabin's role
this time around is to work with the governor to address his concerns,&quot;
said Vaughn, who met last week with John Kabateck, the governor's director of
external affairs. &quot;We will also be looking to see what happens with the
court, that is more likely to happen before a vote of the people.&quot;</p>



<p class=lead>Supreme Court asked to hear case</p>

<p>On the legal front this week, state Attorney General Bill
Lockyer petitioned the California Supreme Court to take up the marriage issue
once again and uphold a Court of Appeal panel decision earlier this year that
found it is not unconstitutional to restrict same-sex couples from being
married. </p>

<p>The Supreme Court stepped into the marriage fight in 2004
when it ordered San Francisco to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex
couples. The court ruled that Mayor Gavin Newsom had no authority to legalize
gay marriage but left it up to the lower courts to decide on whether the
state's anti-gay marriage laws were unconstitutional.</p>

<p>A San Francisco judge ruled in 2005 that California's
exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage discriminates on the basis of sex
and violates the fundamental right to marry under the California Constitution.
Lockyer and two anti-gay groups appealed the decision to the appellate court.</p>

<p>Last month gay rights groups and City Attorney Dennis
Herrera filed appeals of that decision with the state Supreme Court. In an
unusual move since he won at the appellate level, Lockyer filed his own brief
Monday, December 4 urging the court to hear the case.</p>

<p>In a statement announcing his decision, Lockyer stressed
that a ruling from the high court is necessary not only because the issue is of
extreme importance and interest, but because the court should provide
&quot;conclusive resolution&quot; in the matter.</p>

<p>&quot;[T]he legality of same-sex marriage remains an issue
of direct, personal importance to same-sex couples and their families. As this
court previously noted, the decision by San Francisco officials to authorize,
perform, and register thousands of same-sex marriages 'created an unusual,
perhaps unprecedented, set of circumstances.' Those couples married in San
Francisco have since seen their marriages invalidated and waited as the
Superior Court and the Court of Appeal reached opposite conclusions about
whether the state is constitutionally compelled to authorize same-sex
marriages. Like all Californians, these couples rightly expect the final
resolution of this controversy to come from the State's highest court,&quot;
said Lockyer's statement. </p>

<p>The California Supreme Court has no deadline in deciding
whether it will agree to review the same-sex marriage litigation. </p>

<p>In addition to Lockyer's brief, the court has received a
request from an anti-gay group to be reinstated into the case. The appellate
justices found that both Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund and
the Campaign for California Families lacked standing to sue San Francisco
officials over the marriage issue. </p>

<p>The fund petitioned the court to reverse that decision. The
city filed its own brief on Monday requesting the justices deny the anti-gay
group's request. </p>

<p>&quot;Although San Francisco's decision to issue marriage
licenses to couples of the same sex in 2004 created an ideological and
political conflict between the city and the fund, whose avowed mission is to
ensure the continued restriction of marriage to one man and one woman in
California, this disagreement is insufficient to give the fund standing to seek
declaratory relief. Standing requires a showing of potential injury, but the
fund's members face no invasion of their legal interests if the current
marriage laws are declared unconstitutional,&quot; Herrera states in his brief.
</p>

<p>As for the Campaign for California Families, its president
Randy Thomasson wasted no time last week attacking Leno's bill. Even before it had
been resubmitted, Thomasson issued a statement saying, &quot;As Californians
prepare to celebrate Christmas, the Democrats have declared war upon marriage
between a man and a woman. To continue to push for full-blown 'gay marriage'
licenses is unlawful, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.&quot;</p>

<p>Thomasson's group mailed and faxed commitment forms to every
California state legislator, asking them to protect marriage for a man and a
woman by opposing Leno's bill. He also warned that since &quot;Californians
cannot depend on politicians or judges to protect marriage,&quot; the <a
href="http://www.VoteYesMarriage.com">www.VoteYesMarriage.com</a> coalition
will move forward with plans to place on the ballot a constitutional amendment
that would &quot;permanently protect marriage for one man and one woman.&quot;</p><br>
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