Recap of Monday's Gay Marriage Hearing in Washington, DC

THE FIVE-HOUR hearing last Monday before the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics seemed interminable, and the arguments from proponents of the so-called Marriage Initiative ranged from the absurd to the offensive to the pathetic. The question before the board was whether a proposal by a Maryland pastor to deny gay people the right to civil marriage (and forcibly divorce those D.C. couples already married) violated District law, which prohibits any referendum that would have the effect of “authorizing discrimination” against D.C. residents on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender. Seemingly oblivious to the legal standard — that the D.C. Code, unlike, say California’s laws, actually bars a majority vote on a minority’s civil rights — person after person rose to testify to the patient, if astonished, board that gay people deserved no more civil rights than a “goldfish,” a “cobra,” or a “family pet.” “Let us vote,” they thundered, citing everything from the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King, with no apparent understanding that the majority of Alabama and Mississippi voters in the 1960s opposed civil rights for African Americans. Did they even know that it was the Constitution of the United States — enforced by people of good will of all colors, religions, and sexual orientations — that trumped the bigoted majority of that time? Did they realize that the primary organizer of the March on Washington was a gay man, Bayard Rustin? Or that King stood up for him at a time when being gay was a criminal offense? Full Story from the Washington Blade: http://www.washblade.com/2009/11-6/view/editorial/15502.cfm

Planning to marry your partner? Click here for gay marriage resources in Washington, DC.

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