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by Jim Holman.
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A Horrible Message

State Bills Chip Away at Marriage

By Robert Kumpel

As many voters surmised, the passage of Proposition 22 did not put the question of homosexual marriage to rest. The California State Assembly has passed one new bill and is considering two others that challenge the traditional model of marriage.

One bill, written by Carole Migden of San Francisco, is already law. It provides for the definition, registration and termination of a domestic partnership with the secretary of state, provides an option for state and local public employers to extend health benefits to domestic partners, and specifies domestic partner hospital visitation rights.

Another bill, co-authored by Gloria Romero of Monterey Park and Kevin Shelley of San Francisco, would expand the legal rights of a registered domestic partner to include the right to make medical treatment decisions on behalf of his partner if the partner is a patient in a health facility and is incapable of giving informed consent.

A third bill, written by Sheila Kuehl of Encino, expands the legal rights of domestic partners to include rights regarding the incapacitation or death of their partner, including the authority to file wrongful-death suits, make funeral arrangements, act as conservators, make autopsy decisions, and receive assets and property from a will. This bill would also recognize domestic partnerships from jurisdictions outside the state. This bill and the Romero bill are currently inactive, but are slated to be re-activated after the November elections.

Should Catholics oppose these bills? Spokesmen for the archdiocese of Los Angeles, and the dioceses of Orange and San Bernardino declined to comment on any of the bills. Each diocesan spokesman insisted that the California Catholic Conference spoke for them.

The California Catholic Conference's spokeswoman, Carol Hogan, was guarded in her responses to questions about domestic partnership bills. "We took a lot of heat for our support for Proposition 22," she said. "We have supported changes to the law that would allow for equal treatment of people who are in long-term relationships. That would be visitation in the hospital, ability to own property together, and have the right of inheritance. But we have always been against formalizing a relationship that would be a parallel to marriage."

Hogan said that the conference did not support the Migden bill. However, when I read the summaries of the other two bills, she replied, "that sounds like something that we would have suggested in lieu of a formal arrangement. That is a case where we don't take a position. Actually our formal position is -- Watch -- which means, wait and see. In many ways it s like closing the barn door after the horse is out; since [the Migden bill] is law -- we were opposed to that one. Now domestic partnerships are a fact of life in California. This is only a slice of what all that means."

When asked what aspect of domestic partnership law the bishops supported, Hogan denied any support of domestic partnership. "For years we said we would support [domestic partnerships], if they amended the definition of domestic partners to include blood relatives," Hogan said. "Then health benefits, lots of other benefits, could be extended to adult children living with family members, elderly people living with their children, so on and so forth. That would truly be an equity position. They [the assembly] showed their hand by rejecting those proposed amendments and keeping it narrow so that it would specifically be described in so many words as same sex coupling.

"This has been ongoing for close to ten years and we have been opposed and left amended on a number of bills that tried to get a definition of domestic partners into law. It finally went through and got signed into law once Gray Davis got on board." Referring to the bishops' correspondence with the legislature, Hogan added, "In a number of those letters, you will find that the bishops said that they'd never want to deny people self-identified as homosexuals any civil rights that they should have under the law. But they also said that it was not necessary to set up a parallel institution to marriage, i.e. domestic partnership, for them to have those rights. And they weren't opposed to such things as hospital visitation, inheritance rights, or rights in the lineage of who makes health care decisions. They weren't opposed to those sorts of laws on a case-by-case basis. They were just opposed to setting up this blanket definition of domestic partnership as a parallel to marriage -- which is exactly how it's being perceived. In fact, I've heard radio personalities refer to it as gay marriage -- which it's technically not, but that's how people are perceiving it."

One pastor in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, who asked not to be identified, said that the bills "seem conceived for the homosexual agenda. If you're married to each other, you're more than domestic partners. When you talk of natural law, which links you with the Catholic faith, there is a certain way that God created marriage and families as a sacred thing, regardless of our culture. I would hope that laws would be passed that would support families, meaning husbands, wives and children, rather than alternate families -- and I think that's what this is getting at. This is just inching along to where everything is equal and it just doesn't matter. I'd be concerned with the intention to legitimize those kinds of relationships, not just from a religious perspective, but from a natural law perspective."

A volunteer Catholic pro-family activist who lives in Sacramento and closely follows the state legislature spoke on condition of anonymity regarding the bills. "The goal of all these bills is to make sodomy a respectable activity," he said. "Whatever you want to say, the basis of homosexual or domestic partnerships is the act of sodomy. The premiere piece of legislation was passed in 1976, which was the Consenting Adults law. That legalized sodomy with some restrictions -- it didn't apply to minors -- which is how they got some crazy conservatives to go along with it. And it doesn't apply to institutions; however, we now have institutions passing out condoms to same-sex populations. Whatever they may say, trying to be euphemistic about 'sharing expenses' and 'sharing their lives,' the bottom line is sex. They're sexually attracted to each other and engaged in some kind of sexual relationship.

"You may want to point out to your readers that we have two activist lesbian legislators who are militantly pushing this agenda, and its anticipated that there will be four lesbians after the November elections. One of the two current ones is Carol Migden from San Francisco. She's got Willie Brown's old seat. Although she s not the speaker, she is the chairman of the appropriations committee. The other is Sheila Kuehl, the former Dobie Gillis T.V. actress and onetime Loyola Law School faculty member. (Kuehl is also the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.) Then there's Christine Kehoe from San Diego, who is almost certain to win in November. And then Jackie Goldberg, who's an activist homosexual and was on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board and pushed the whole agenda there. Shes a shoo-in. So there will be four.

"Another thing that is happening is that were getting more women here, particularly in the once Catholic Latino community. They are gradually discriminating against men, so almost all the Hispanic men legislators are being put out and being replaced by Hispanic women, most of whom are pro-abortion, pro-lesbian, and pro-libertine."

Randy Thomasson is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for California Families, a non-profit, non-partisan, statewide pro-family organization. Thomasson has been closely following these and other related bills and was equally blunt in his warning: "dont get snookered into agreeing to promote homosexual marriage. If a snake is rattling inside of a wrapped Christmas gift box, it s still a snake in there.

"[The Migden bill] was signed into law last fall by Gray Davis one day before he had a big homosexual fundraiser in Beverly Hills," said Thomasson. "It was called the Presidential Gay Dinner. Davis signed three homosexual bills on a Friday, and embargoed the story until Saturday. At the dinner he announced to the wealthy homosexuals that he brought home the goodies. Another bill signed that weekend was AB 1001, which put sexual orientation on the same level as race in our state's civil rights law. Specifically, it amended the powerful Fair Employment and Housing Act to include sexual orientation, which means state investigations, fines and audits of up to 50,000 dollars against any business owner or property owner that discriminates against any of the protected classes in that part of the law. So what this means is that Gray Davis has insured the potential for homosexual activists shutting down a Catholic bookstore. A homosexual activist could apply for a job, and say, 'I'll be here for work on time, I love Jesus and I want to tell people how to be a Gay Christian.' If the owner of the bookstore balks or hesitates, that homosexual activist can get what he wanted. He has the ammunition to file a complaint with the State of California, so a state attorney, using taxpayer dollars, would investigate this discrimination complaint. If the expense of the audit or the investigation did not destroy the bookstore, certainly the 50, 000 dollar fine would.

"The other bill he signed," continued Thomasson, "was a job security bill for homosexual teachers in public schools. It means that school boards and parents can do nothing, absolutely nothing, when a teacher comes out as a transgendered teacher. They cannot remove their kids from the classroom, they cannot remove the teacher from the school. That would be discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This is a civil rights law and civil rights are more important than dress codes! This carries huge weight.

"AB 2047, currently inactive, is an omnibus homosexual partners bill. It's styled as 'homosexual marriage.' That bill has a lot of stuff in it. It gives marriage benefits to homosexual couples in about seven different ways. It's weakening and watering down marriage. It's saying that marriage is not special. It's a horrible message for young people. It's promoting a medically dangerous lifestyle statewide.

"AB 2211 would recognize domestic partnerships from other states, thus undermining Proposition 22," said Thomasson. "The radical homosexual activists know that pushing for marriage rights and (pushing for) marriage are not the same -- it's politically unfeasable. So instead of promoting homosexual marriage on its face, they are dragging natural marriage down to the level of homosexual relationships. Instead of pushing for homosexual marriage in one fell swoop, with over 300 marriage rights and benefits, they're pushing to give marriage benefits, one by one, to homosexual couples. If I took everything out of your house and brought it to mine, eventually, you won't own anything, will you?

"AB 1990 deals with medical decision making. We've pointed out that for about 15 dollars anyone can go to Office Depot or Staples and purchase a medical power of attorney for health care form and take care of their concerns. They can name a conservator or someone to make medical decisions. The homosexual activists say, 'that's too difficult.' Well, first of all, it s not too difficult. Anyone who is a domestic partner must be somewhat responsible. They must also fill out paperwork and they must also pay a fee. So paying something for a durable power of attorney form, filling it out and being somewhat responsible is exactly what we should expect from domestic partners. Anyone who is really concerned about medical decision making -- they already have a solution. But that's not what the homosexual activists are after, they re after redefining marriage, watering it down and promoting homosexuality on the same level as marriage between a husband and wife."

Thomasson minces no words regarding the fight against this explosion of homosexual activism. "Its time for people of faith to get informed and to get active in defending the moral values we hold dear," he said. "That means mixing politics with religion. It means putting feet to our faith. It means being not hearers, but doers, so we can defend and protect our children and our grandchildren. It's not enough to worry. We actually have to get involved with supporting good candidates and good legislation and opposing anti-family candidates and legislation."

The Campaign for California Families website can be found at www.savecalifornia.com.

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