New York Times

April 17, 2005
Tying the Half Knot
By AVI SALZMAN

ABOUT six years ago, the organization Love Makes a Family of Connecticut, advocates for same-sex marriage, began introducing legislators to their gay neighbors. Coffee was served and couples explained what a gay family looked like, and everyone left knowing a little more.

Gay rights advocates and some lawmakers said that kind of hand-holding was what led to the Senate vote in favor of civil unions on April 6 and the House approval last Wednesday. But for much of the buildup to those votes, the advocates and their allies weren't holding hands at all. They weren't even talking.

A funny thing happened on the way to civil unions, which would extend many benefits of marriage to gay couples, including those having to do with health care and taxes. As lawmakers prepared this year to push the bill, some gay advocates who had lobbied for it for years changed their minds. Civil unions were not good enough, they said at a meeting with key legislators just before the beginning of the session, and they planned to oppose the bill. They wanted gay marriage. Nothing less would do.

"Being married is a status that civil unions doesn't compare to," said Anne Stanback, the president of Love Makes a Family.

The position roiled people who had supported Love Makes a Family in the past.

"We basically broke off communications," said Michael Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven who is co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee and who was at the meeting.

The politics of same-sex marriage have shifted considerably over the last five years, with events in Vermont and Massachusetts shaping what has happened in Connecticut, where activists have tried to push even further ahead. But when political reality set in, they had to reconcile their ideals with the achievable goals. Gay marriage may be on its way. Just not right now.

Thirteen states have banned same-sex marriage, and President Bush has backed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. If Connecticut passes the civil unions bill, which includes the last-minute amendment by the House that says marriage is between a man and a woman, it will be the first state to approve civil unions without being pressured by the courts. The bill now goes back to the State Senate, and if passed, on to Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

It is no surprise that the conversation is different here. Lawmakers have written numerous pieces of legislation to give homosexuals rights and protections. They included protections for gay men and lesbians in hate-crime legislation in 1990 and passed a bill in 1991 to outlaw discrimination against them in housing, employment and other areas.

In November 1999, five organizations banded together to create Love Makes a Family to push for co-parent adoption rights . In 2000, the state passed the Second-Parent Adoption Act, which allows unmarried couples to share custody of children they raise together. Shortly after, a neighboring state passed a bill that foreshadowed Connecticut's next battle.

Under pressure from the Vermont Supreme Court, Gov. Howard Dean signed a law in April 2000 allowing gay men and lesbians to join in civil unions that would give them many of the rights of marriage.

Activists for gay and lesbian rights had a new goal, and they started to build grass-roots support.

Love Makes a Family had already begun their meet-and-greet gatherings aimed at educating legislators. At the home of a gay or lesbian family, the group set up meetings that included the lawmaker and a dozen or so neighbors interested in the same issues.

"It's just a very informal meeting where people tell personal stories," Ms. Stanback said. "It allows a lot of legislators to see same-sex couples, some who are raising kids, some who aren't. It really introduces them to the normality of our lives."

Mr. Lawlor, who attended one of the meetings, said he did not initially know what to think of the idea of same-sex marriage.

"When this issue first popped up, I didn't know about gay marriage," he said. At the time, he thought that the idea of gay marriage was "a little weird."

Mr. Lawlor said the informal meeting helped him understand the issue much better.

"The more you think about it, the more you come around," he said.

To Ms. Stanback, Vermont's civil unions law always appeared to be a half measure. She said that she wanted same-sex marriage from the start, but that civil unions appeared to be the ceiling for the moment.

Love Makes a Family's initial attempts to push civil unions through the Legislature failed. The support wasn't there.

Everything changed on Nov. 18, 2003. That day, Ms. Stanback was in Hartford announcing the results of a poll on same-sex marriage when someone whispered in her ear that a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal in that state.

"The bar had been raised and we could really articulate and push hard for our true goal," she said. "With the Massachusetts ruling, we saw that marriage was not only a possibility, but a reality."

The debate shifted. Civil unions became a "moderate compromise," Ms. Stanback said, and full-fledged marriage became a seemingly attainable goal. Love Makes a Family became involved in a handful of races for the state House and Senate in 2004, supporting candidates who wanted to extend rights to same-sex couples. Some of those candidates won.

"We knew we were coming out of the elections with a pro-civil-union" Legislature, she said.

A robust debate began within Love Makes a Family, with some members arguing that it was time to push for marriage and marriage alone, and others saying that the group should also support civil unions. Betty Gallo, a lobbyist hired by the group, said that she had initially worked within the organization to try to gather support for the civil unions bill and push the organization away from its hard-line stance.

But the hard-line group won: Love Makes a Family would oppose a civil unions bill.

Ms. Stanback said that Love Makes a Family's board, which is made up of representatives of different advocacy groups, realized some of its allies would be turned off by the group's stance against civil unions. Civil unions, as outlined in the bill, would essentially give gay and lesbian couples the same rights as a same-sex marriage bill, but the word marriage itself was particularly important, Ms. Stanback said.

"A primary reason why civil unions is not what we want is because it creates a separate system for gay people," she said. "The status of being married is unique in our society. The cultural, social and historical implications can be underestimated. The word marriage itself is a protection. It's a protection because people know what it means."

But gay marriage was also a concept that made many Connecticut residents uncomfortable. A Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month found that voters opposed same-sex marriage, 53 to 42 percent, even though 56 percent of them support civil unions.

Mr. Lawlor said the group's stance closed off discussion just when supporters of gay rights needed to begin a dialogue.

"They've done a great job with a lot of things, but when it came to the actual legislative politics, they got some bad advice from national organizations," Mr. Lawlor said.

Ms. Stanback said that the group does discuss its positions with other state and national leaders, but that the decision on same-sex marriage was made locally.

"We knew our position was not going to be popular, and yet we felt we had to do it anyway," Ms. Stanback said. "The board understood it would upset our friends and we might get shut out of the conversation."

"Different groups play different roles in different civil rights struggles," she added.

The group's stance put its supporters in difficult positions. Ms. Gallo eventually found herself lobbying for a bill she didn't support. Eventually, she said, that became too difficult.

"I really wanted to make that position work, and I tried to do that for almost two months," she said. "But as we got down to the vote in the Judiciary Committee, and it became clear that we could pass civil unions and get real rights now, I just felt I couldn't lobby against it."

So Ms. Gallo broke off her contract with Love Makes a Family . She is now lobbying for the bill for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, another member of Love Makes a Family that broke with the organization on the civil unions bill.

In the Legislature, some socially liberal lawmakers suddenly found themselves voting with social conservatives. Senator Mary Ann Handley, a Democrat from Manchester, said that she was concerned that civil unions "created a separate and unequal status" for homosexuals. So she spoke out strongly against it when it came through the Judiciary Committee.

"I had my chance to rant in Judiciary," she said.

She voted against the bill in the committee. It then went to the Appropriations Committee, where Ms Handley also sits. But this time she decided to vote for the bill.

"In the Appropriations Committee, the reality of the situation came through, as it does," she said. "I voted for it in the Appropriations Committee and for it on the floor" of the Senate.

After the vote in the Judiciary Committee, Love Makes a Family took a similar stance. Once the group saw that a same-sex marriage bill presented to the Judiciary Committee wasn't going to pass, but that civil unions might, it withdrew its opposition to the bill.

"We also are pragmatic and we understood that the momentum wasn't there for marriage as it was for civil unions," Ms. Stanback said. "Once that was crystal clear, we decided we wouldn't stand in the way of a bill that provided rights."

Sometimes change has to be incremental, some other gay activists said.

"With any kind of major change like this, it needs to be a series of steps," said Margaret J. O'Connell, who is on the board of the Triangle Community Center in Norwalk, which is devoted to gay and lesbian issues. She wants to marry her lesbian partner, Maureen Mollahan.

One opponent of the civil unions bill said Love Makes a Family's stance was obviously a political tactic all along.

"The idea was to come in with their strongest hand - marriage - and then at the least, they thought, they would be guaranteed civil unions," said Brian S. Brown, the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut.

Ms. Stanback said that the group was not simply playing politics. The stance did shift the debate, though, she said.

"I think it produced a stronger vote, and stronger statements of support for marriage as the ultimate goal in this campaign," Ms. Stanback said after the Senate vote.

Mr. Lawlor, who supports gay marriage, said the best way to convince people isn't to immediately take the most extreme position and refuse to budge.

"I don't think they were in a position to give orders to legislators," he said. "This is one of those issues where it doesn't work well."

Hard-line positions don't work on this issue in Connecticut, unlike other parts of the country, he said. People need to gradually come around. He has no doubt that, eventually, they will.