By the time you read this, Connecticut could either be the third state in the country to allow same sex couples to legally marry… OR… we could be gearing up for a huge push in the 2008 legislative session to win marriage in the General Assembly.
[UPDATE from eQualityGiving: The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on October 10, 2008 that the civil unions available in the state were not sufficient and that same sex couples had the right to marry in the state. Starting November 12, 2008 same sex couples from anywhere where able to get married in Connecticut.]
| By Anne Stanback | Contact  Anne Stanback was the Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, Connecticut’s marriage equality organization. The organization dissolved in 2008 after having fully achieved its mission. Anne has also served as the Executive Director of the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund and Connecticut NARAL.
Anne has received numerous awards for her efforts, most notably, induction in 2006 into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame as the first open lesbian for her work to advance the rights of women and the LGBT community.
Anne is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina and Yale Divinity School. She lives in Avon, Connecticut with her partner of 24 years, Charlotte Kinlock. | |
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As I write this article in late January 2008, we are anxiously waiting for the Connecticut Supreme Court to issue its ruling in our state’s marriage lawsuit, Kerrigan & Mock et al v. Connecticut Department of Public Health. We have also just doubled our staff as we gear up for a battle to pass a marriage bill in our General Assembly when the session begins on February 6th.
In short, Connecticut still has two winnable paths to marriage equality now: a legal path and a legislative path. And 2008 is almost certainly the year that at least one of those paths will reach its final destination.
BACKGROUND ON KERRIGAN
Connecticut’s marriage lawsuit, brought by our partners at GLAD in August 2004 on behalf of eight same sex couples, seeks to end the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage based on the state Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection, due process and expressive association.
When the case was originally filed, Connecticut had no statewide same sex partner recognition. But in April of 2005, the legislature passed a civil union bill and the Governor enthusiastically signed it into law.
This development required additional briefing to the court by GLAD, focusing on the clear second class status that the civil union law had created. Unfortunately—though not surprisingly—the case lost at the lower court in July of 2006, in large measure (if we are to take the text of the decision at face value) because the judge believed that the civil union law adequately addressed what she felt to be the only issue: legal rights.
The judge ruled against the plaintiff couples, but acknowledged that her decision was just a “stopping point” along the way to the state Supreme Court. Which it was.
After several more months of briefing by both sides, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on May 14, 2007. One of the most interesting aspects of the deliberations were questions from the Justices that raised the specter of whether the Connecticut Court would make new law by grounding a winning decision in sexual orientation discrimination, rather than one of the other constitutional guarantees… an exciting prospect should it happen.
Love Makes a Family has been working closely with GLAD on Decision Day plans for many months so that our messages will be consistent, our messengers will be effective and diverse, and our supporters will be vocal and visible on that day, win or lose.
Unlike some other state supreme courts, however, the Connecticut Supreme Court has no time frame in which they must issue a decision. There has been a great deal of speculation that a ruling might come before the legislative session begins in early February, but the truth is that no one knows. It could be next week or next year.
The uniqueness of Kerrigan is that it is the first marriage lawsuit in the nation that will be decided in the context of same sex couples having access to civil unions. Will the Supreme Court focus—as Judge Pittman did in the trial court—on rights alone, or will it rightly look beyond rights to the issue of equality? Watch Connecticut carefully; the outcome of this case could be significant on many levels.
BACKGROUND ON THE LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY
At the same time that the Kerrigan lawsuit has been making its way through the courts, Love Makes a Family’s focus has been on the legislature.
Connecticut has a long history of securing rights and protections for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in the state legislature, so it only made sense that when we began our work on marriage that we started with a legislative focus.
Love Makes a Family formed in 1999 in response to a negative decision from the state Supreme Court in a second parent adoption case. By 2000, we had passed an adoption law in the General Assembly with strong bipartisan support.
With adoption secured, we turned our attention to marriage and have worked with legislative leaders to hold public hearings on marriage bills in five of the last seven years.
In 2002, the legislature passed a bill providing limited rights to same sex couples. And in 2005, Connecticut became the second state in the nation to pass a civil union law—the first to do so without the pressure of a court.
That win was bittersweet for Love Makes a Family. Our organization, with strong support from all our national partners, had come out strongly in opposition to the civil union compromise. We withdrew our opposition once the marriage bill was finally amended, but for the next two months, the complete focus of our work was to keep the marriage message alive as the civil union bill was being debated.
By the time the civil union bill passed, ten times as many legislators had gone on record in support of marriage as had previously. New coalition partners, from the AFL-CIO to children’s advocacy organizations to additional religious leaders, had joined our marriage equality coalition. And powerful newspaper editorials in support of marriage (and critical of the discrimination inherent in civil unions) had appeared for the first time.
The LGBT community was split; many legislators were angry. But something had shifted. Marriage and civil union had finally become differentiated in people’s minds.
FALLOUT BUT NO BACKLASH
Anger from community members and pro-equality legislators was real but eventually faded. More important than the infighting that occurred among friends was what did not occur: public backlash.
The lack of backlash—in fact, the overwhelmingly positive response to the law’s passage from nearly all quarters—had an obvious strategic advantage: Love Makes a Family was not put in the position of having to defend civil unions as marriage advocates in Vermont had been forced to do as the First Civil Union State. Instead, we were able to keep up the drumbeat for marriage.
Did we temporarily lose momentum with our grassroots? Yes. Were we forced to soften our message around civil union as a way to unite the community? Yes.
But our clear opposition to civil union as an end goal had changed the dynamics of the debate and put us in the very position we needed to be in.
As expected, this could not have served us better in the 2006 elections. Had the civil union bill been seen as our bill, our PAC would have been in the uncomfortable and untenable situation of having to endorse and work for legislators who voted for civil union (even if their opponent supported marriage and even if their civil union vote was only done as a way to prevent marriage).
However, we also felt pressure to ensure that no one lost their election because they did vote for civil union.
In the end, no incumbent who voted for civil union was defeated except in cases where they were defeated by pro-marriage challengers.
FAST FORWARD TO 2008
If We Win in Court…
We could not have better legal minds working on the Kerrigan case than our partners at GLAD and their cooperating attorneys. And based on everything we have seen and heard, there is no reason to believe we cannot win in court.
But as we saw in Massachusetts, a Connecticut Supreme Court win will not cause our opponents to throw in the towel. Anti-gay organizations like the Family Institute of Connecticut are already mobilizing their members in hopes of amending our state Constitution to ban marriage for same sex couples. (*For more information see Confidential Addendum in Registered Member Site.)
But if We Lose in Court…
If we lose the marriage case in the Supreme Court, our only remaining path will be the legislature. The support there for marriage equality now has grown significantly since civil unions became law in 2005. Ten months ago, Connecticut became only the second state in the country to pass a marriage bill in a legislative committee with a decisive bipartisan win (27-15) in our Judiciary Committee.
The full legislature has not been ready to vote on marriage thus far, but the momentum to pass a marriage bill—if we are rebuffed by the Supreme Court—will be stronger in 2008 than it has been at any time before.
A Legislative Win Will Require:
- 19 votes in the Senate
We have those votes.
- 76 votes in the House
We are still short, but with a strong grassroots push over the next three months, we feel optimistic we can reach our magic number by the time the session ends in early May.
- Support from Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell
One year ago, Governor Rell stated that she would veto a marriage bill. Moving her will be a challenge, but through a combination of grassroots lobbying and appeals by marriage supporters close to her that a veto will put her on the wrong side of history and damage her legacy, we are hopeful that we can change her mind.
CONCLUSION
Winning the freedom to marry here in Connecticut is critically important, not just to families in our state, but to the marriage movement nationally:
• After so many recent losses, our movement needs the momentum of a win.
• Massachusetts cannot continue to exist as the lone marriage state.
• Connecticut is a bell-weather state: We can get “stuck” with civil union as an acceptable political compromise and set the precedent that civil unions are good enough; OR we can show the country that a state can move swiftly from civil union to marriage with no discernible backlash… that, in fact, the two step process of "marriage lite" to marriage was not needed in the first place.
Love Makes a Family will be working round the clock with our state and national partners over the coming months to make sure the precedent we set here will be a positive one.
