OLYMPIA – Charlene Strong held up a photograph of her late partner, Kathryn Fleming, as she asked state lawmakers to extend domestic partnership benefits to same-sex couples.
Fleming, a leading reader for audiobooks, died after she became trapped by rising water in her basement studio in Seattle during a severe storm last month. Strong told lawmakers she was barred from the hospital room of her partner of 10 years until a family member intervened.
“As the minutes ticked by I kept wondering, ‘What if she dies without me holding her hand? What if she dies without knowing that I told her I loved her?’” she told the Senate Government Operations &Elections Committee on Thursday.
She said she later encountered obstacles in trying to donate Fleming’s retinas, and in planning the funeral.
“This bill is exactly what I experienced in real life,” she said, asking lawmakers to support a measure that would remove such barriers for other same-sex couples.
The bill would create a domestic partnership registry with the state and would provide certain rights to domestic partners, including hospital visitation, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.
To be registered, couples would have to share a home, not be married or in a domestic relationship with someone else, and be at least 18.
Like California law, unmarried, heterosexual senior couples would also be eligible for domestic partnerships if one partner is at least 62.
Opponents seized on the inclusion of heterosexual couples to argue that the bill is reverse discrimination, and that it should be amended to include all people who care for others, including grandparents and siblings.
“This bill grants to domestic partners a package of rights it fails to grant to many other kinds of relationships,” said Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Washington State Catholic Conference.
But Sen. Ed Murray, the bill’s prime sponsor, accused opponents of trying to confuse the issue.
“One of the things that they’ve learned is that discrimination doesn’t work in this state, and for years that’s what they’ve talked about – discrimination against gay and lesbian people,” said Murray, a Seattle Democrat who is one of five openly gay lawmakers in the Legislature. “And now they’re trying to turn the tables and accuse us, who have no access to marriage, of discriminating.”
Other opponents argued that the domestic partnership bill would erode traditional marriage.
“The sponsors of this bill have said this is the first step for legalizing same-sex marriage in this state,” said Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage &Children. “I cannot overlook the direction this bill, and others likely to follow, are headed, and that is clearly the redefinition of marriage.”
The state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage in a 5-4 decision last July, ruling that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.
However, three justices writing in the majority invited the Legislature to take another look at the gay marriage ban’s effect on same-sex couples.
Last month, New Jersey adopted civil unions for same-sex couples, joining Connecticut and Vermont. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry, while California has domestic partnerships that bring full marriage rights.
Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate have said the bill has a good chance of passing. Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park and chairwoman of the Government Operations &Elections Committee, said there were enough votes to pass it out of committee, though there may be some technical amendments.
Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign the measure if it gets to her desk.
Murray previously spearheaded a gay civil-rights bill that became law last year after nearly 30 years of failure in the Legislature. That measure added “sexual orientation” to a state law that bans discrimination in housing, employment, insurance and credit on the basis of such characteristics as race and religion.
Another measure introduced this year by Murray would allow same-sex marriage. That bill is scheduled for a public hearing next Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but it was expected to be postponed because Murray said he wanted to focus on the domestic partnership measure first.
Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, is pushing a constitutional amendment to affirm traditional marriage, a proposal unlikely to succeed since Democrats have overwhelming control of both the House and the Senate.
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