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Gay Marriage Ban Effort Proceeds

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By ANNA SCOTT, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: November 5, 2007

A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Florida is closing in on a spot on the 2008 ballot, triggering a political battle that could sway voters in a presidential year.

Florida4Marriage, the group pushing the amendment, has garnered 597,000 signatures and needs only 13,000 more to put it before voters.

Proponents of the ban are heartened by polls showing that the amendment has a good chance of getting the 60 percent of votes necessary for passage.

"People intuitively understand why marriage should be between a man and a woman," said John Stemberger, head of Florida4Marriage. "This campaign is not a shot in the dark."

The issue is more complicated than it sounds.

Gay marriage is already illegal in Florida, because it is a state that adopted the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Writing that into the state constitution would prevent state judges from overturning the law to allow gay marriage, as the state Supreme Court did in Massachusetts.

In some states, though, bans similar to the one proposed in Florida have opened the door to lawsuits challenging all domestic partnership benefits.

In Florida, cities such as Tampa, Gainesville and Miami Beach have domestic partner registries, where unmarried couples, gay or straight, can sign up and be allowed to share health insurance benefits in government jobs, and also receive medical cards allowing each other to visit in the hospital.

In Southwest Florida, such benefits only are offered in the private sector, which has not been challenged under the bans in other states, but which opponents of the ban say is possible.

When the amendment passed in Michigan, however, an appeals court ruled that because of the amendment, local and state government offices no longer could legally allow same-sex couples to share benefits such as health insurance. That case is before the Michigan Supreme Court.

Opponents of the amendment in Florida say the same thing could happen here in government offices where domestic partnership benefits are offered.

Courting Straight Votes

Hoping to imitate the success in Arizona, the only state to vote down the gay marriage ban, opponents of the amendment are focusing on the potential for those kinds of lawsuits, not the polarizing issue of gay marriage.

Organizers are courting straight couples in committed relationships to help persuade voters to turn down the amendment.

Their central message is that the amendment could prevent all unmarried couples from receiving the benefits or protections that married couples receive, and that it could bring financial hardship to seniors, especially.

"Voters need to be aware that this issue isn't limited to having to do with gay and lesbian people," said Derek Newton, leader of Florida Red and Blue, a nonpartisan group formed in May to fight the ban. "Anyone who's not married or at some point in the future may not be married, this is going to impact them."

The Florida Red and Blue campaign features Wayne Rauen and Helene Milman, senior citizens from Sunrise who have been together for 24 years but are not married, because then Milman would lose her late husband's pension.

Stemberger, head of Florida4Marriage, said the campaign is using a "scare tactic."

"They can't talk about gay marriage because if they did they would have to discuss the public policy merits and there aren't any," Stemberger said.

"What they did in Arizona is a very pathetic strategy of scaring senior citizens into losing their benefits. That has nothing to do with anything."

The obscurity lies in the language of the amendment, which reads: "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

Stemberger argues that challenges to domestic partnerships are unlikely because the amendment is close enough to the current Florida state law banning same-sex marriage. That law was previously challenged in an effort to revoke domestic partnership benefits, but the court ruled in favor of protecting the benefits.

Effort Splits GOP Candidates

A legislative analysis of the amendment said a relationship that was the "substantial equivalent of marriage" was ambiguous and could lead to lawsuits to overturn domestic partnership benefits.

The issue has split top Republican presidential candidates. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he firmly supports a ban. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he thought it was unnecessary but would support one if several states tried to legalize gay marriage.

Gay marriage also has been a challenging issue for Democrats. When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is asked whether she supports gay marriage, she says she prefers to think about it as being "very positive" about civil unions.

That the issue could spike the number of voters, particularly conservative voters, at the polls makes opponents more anxious to defeat it.

"To defeat it in the South in a presidential election year will have ripple effects," Nadine Smith, president of Equality Florida, told Democrats at the party's state convention last month. "It's a wedge issue in a battleground state in a key election year."

One side effect of the Florida campaign against the amendment is that some homosexuals feel slighted because the message is not centered on promoting positive opinions of gay marriage, but rather showing how heterosexual couples would be affected.

"It's a little sad," said Bryan Worthington of Venice, president of the local Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered caucus. "If there were no way to link the effects of this amendment to straight people, then it would pass in a heartbeat. But we have to do what it takes and it will end up affecting the rights of all people, gay or straight."

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