Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
D.C. Board Of Elections And Ethics Rejects Gay Marriage Referendum.
Over at DCist, Sommer Mathis gives us the latest from the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, which was asked to consider whether a referendum on gay marriage would violate D.C.'s human-rights law by putting the civil rights of the LGBT community up to a vote. Like the question of whether recognition of gay marriage from other states should be subject to a referendum that the Board considered earlier this year, the answer was a no-brainer:
In an opinion released today, the Board made much the same argument that it did in a previous decision that barred a ballot initiative on the matter of recognizing same-sex marriages that are performed legally in other jurisdictions. In both decisions, the Board held that such initiatives do 'not present a proper subject of initiative because it would authorize discrimination prohibited under the Human Rights Act (“HRA”).'
The HRA of course, is part of the long game that D.C. LGBT rights activists have been playing. The 1970s-era human-rights law contains a provision, inserted by marriage-equality opponent Marion Barry, that the referendum process could never be used to "interfere with basic human and civil rights." Marriage is obviously one of those. At the time, the GLAA, a local LGBT rights group, lobbied hard to ensure that LGBTs would be among the protected groups named in the law -- meaning that when the National Organization for Marriage came to town with Bishop Harry Jackson as their front man, the battle had already mostly been won. That old line about one side playing chess and the other playing checkers? That's what this looks like.
With no referendum, and with a mostly Democratic Congress unlikely to interfere, and the D.C. City Council set to vote on a marriage equality bill in early December, marriage equality in D.C. is looking like more of a sure thing than health-care reform. After all the criticism of the black community we've seen in the past year over marriage equality, a majority black city is about to become among the first to recognize unions between same-sex couples.
-- A. Serwer
COMMENTS (4)
After all the criticism of the black community we've seen in the past year over marriage equality, a majority black city is about to become among the first to recognize unions between same-sex couples.
Um, if you don't want to "credit" the black community for CA's passing of Prop 8, you don't get to credit them here either, unless you have specific evidence to back that up.
Posted by: Anonymous | November 17, 2009 4:11 PM
Once again African American are begging for the right to vote from an arrogant Washington DC city council. I feel so much shame as an American. Gay marriage is a false civil right for a small deviant minority that will create mor fatherless and motherless homes. So called gay marriage is 100% sexist and violate he basic civil rights of chidren
Posted by: soleil10 | November 17, 2009 5:38 PM
well anon, it sounds kind of like you want to credit them for prop 8 and not this. So what are u saying exactly?
Its not about who should be given credit, its the the black community in CA was scapegoated over that issue but that its unlikely much acknowledgment will be made about this.
Soleil, that's just ridiculous.
Posted by: Awkward Silence | November 18, 2009 9:22 AM
soleil10, I'm the (straight) child of gay parents. So, as someone with actual experience, let me say that having two mothers doesn't seem like a violation of my civil rights to me, and I don't see how letting them be legally married would change that.
Posted by: cminus | November 18, 2009 12:04 PM