SACRAMENTO — As attention turns this week to marriages for gays and lesbians in Massachusetts, Democratic lawmakers in California who back the concept have all but abandoned their efforts -- for now.
Election-year politics and the skittishness of a handful of Assembly members is stalling a measure to grant marriage rights to same-gender couples. Some lawmakers say they would rather wait until cases pending in the California courts are resolved.
This week, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) is expected to announce his support -- in 2005 -- for a bill legalizing unions for gays and lesbians. But he is allowing the issue to die this year, postponing one of the only legislative efforts in the nation on the issue.
"We're disappointed the leadership hasn't made this a priority bill," said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California, who helped draft this year's legislation. "On the other hand, we appreciate that the leadership has done more to move this forward than in any other state legislature in the country."
Gay rights groups view the California legislation as part of a strategy that emerged when San Francisco began granting marriage licenses three months ago. Now, court cases are pending in New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, New York and California, and a federal constitutional amendment is up for debate in Washington, D.C.
Gay and lesbian activists believe that the public, while still skeptical, is slowly embracing the concept of marriage for same-sex couples. A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that slightly less than a third of Californians favored expanding marriage, compared with a fourth of U.S. residents in a national poll last month.
"It's a public conversation in all those arenas," said Jennifer Pizer, senior staff attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles. "In California, we have the particularly poignant example of couples who married in San Francisco. We have the Legislature doing its job and public opinion moving steadily toward equality."
The California Supreme Court is expected to hear debate next week on whether San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had the right to issue marriage licenses to more than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples in February and March. Cases also are pending in Superior Court in San Francisco that are expected to address broader constitutional issues.
