Gay marriage opponents pack Board of Elections hearing

The Washington Blade reports on Monday's hearing by the Board of Elections and Ethics on the proposed anti-gay D.C. ballot initiative:

The D.C. Board of Election & Ethics heard a flood of support Monday for a proposed voter initiative to ban same-sex marriage in the city, with far more people supporting speaking for than against the idea.

People who signed up to ask officials to approve the voter initiative outnumbered — more than 80 to 10 — the people slated to speak against placing such an initiative on the ballot....

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys Cleta Mitchell and Austin Nimocks ... argued that a 1995 D.C. Court of Appeals ruling in the case Dean v. District of Columbia held that the city’s denial at that time of a marriage license to a same-sex couple did not violate the D.C. Human Rights Act, and that the Dean ruling still applies today.

The two attorneys said Dean takes precedent over the election law’s requirement that initiatives and referendum comply with the Human Rights Act.

But gay rights attorney Mark Levine, working on behalf the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, wrote in a legal brief he submitted to the board that the Dean decision has been effectively overturned by legislative action taken by the City Council.

“[F]ourteen years later, the legal landscape has changed dramatically,” Levine wrote. “The D.C. Council has expressly endorsed same-sex marriage. The Council has not only made all marriage statutes gender neutral; it has also expressly required the District to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside its jurisdiction — something not possible in 1995 when no state permitted gay couples to marry.”

Levine's argument regarding Dean was virtually the same as my own on behalf of GLAA. While those of us on the pro-marriage-equality side were vastly outnumbered by the opponents, most of the witnesses supporting the initiative offered only religious arguments. As Bob Summersgill (who also testified) said, our opponents essentially agreed the initiative would discriminate against same-sex couples, they simply thought that such discrimination was appropriate. But as several of us pointed out, and as the Board members appear to agree, the facts and the law are against them.

In addition to those already mentioned, testifying on the pro-gay side at the BOEE hearing were Philip Pannell for the D.C. Coalition, Allen Rose for Dignity Washington, and Nick McCoy for the Human Rights Campaign. Also opposing the initiative at the hearing were D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson (who immediately afterward had to run across town to prepare for his own hearing on the marriage equality bill) and Brian Flowers, General Counsel to the D.C. Council.

A lot of us will be quite surprised if the Board rules that the proposed measure is a proper subject matter for initiative.