Legislators Support Same-Sex Marriage

SACRAMENTO — A California Assembly panel endorsed legalizing gay and lesbian marriages Tuesday, marking the first time that any legislative body in the U.S. has supported such marriages with a formal vote.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee approved a bill to grant full marriage rights to same sex-couples after a 90-minute hearing that included a gay couple with fidgety children, lesbians who had met on a blind date in 1973, social conservatives and a mother who had driven two hours with her family to condemn the action.

Although the bill is considered unlikely to advance and is expected to die this year, the committee vote marked a significant moment in the debate over homosexual marriage and made a statement about how far public opinion had moved.

"What we are looking at today is a union of two individuals," said Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), author of the measure, "whether for a lifetime or not, whether to procreate or not, to share the joys, the challenges, the ups and downs and exhilarations of life together."

A similar gay marriage bill was introduced in the California Legislature 13 years ago but died in the Assembly Judiciary Committee without receiving a single vote, and advocating civil unions and domestic partnerships was considered politically untenable only a few years ago.

But recent legal cases pending in the California and Massachusetts courts, a wave of gay and lesbian marriages in San Francisco and Oregon and the possibility of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages have given the issue national attention.

The leaders of California's Assembly were under public pressure to support Leno's bill and willing to give him a single public hearing. But in an election year, with focus on the state budget crisis, the bill is expected to die in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

As with almost every discussion in the Legislature over gays and lesbians, the hearing Tuesday took on moral tones amid a wide-ranging debate regarding equal protection under the law, the history of marriage, the Proposition 22 marriage initiative in 2000 and the bitter debate in 1948 over legalizing interracial marriages.

Families speaking against the Leno bill crossed paths in a crowded hearing room with gay and lesbian couples and their families.

About 50 people briefly approached the podium to declare support for the bill, while about a dozen spoke against it.