More than two weeks after the Oregon Supreme Court annulled the approximately 3,000 marriage licenses issued to same sex couples in
Multnomah County last year, the fight for civil unions is gearing up across the state.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski advocated for civil unions during a speech at Basic Rights Oregon’s annual Oregonians Against Discrimination luncheon on Wednesday, encouraging support for Senate Bill 1000, which would legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.
While state officials take on the bill, organizations such as Basic Rights Oregon and Oregon Family Council say they are preparing for legal battles that could continue for years to come. Basic Rights Oregon is a gay rights organization, while Oregon Family Council is a Christian
organization that opposes gay marriage.
Nick Graham, a spokesman for Oregon Family Council, said the organization does not support the bill because it simply legalizes marriage for same-sex couples while calling it something different.
“What they propose to do is actually intertwine civil unions in the current marriage law,” Graham said.
Kulongoski acknowledged that intertwining of marriage and civil unions during his speech and said though civil unions “are not perfect equality,” their inception is a
necessary step in the path of equality for all Oregonians.
“Senate Bill 1000 sets up a legislative structure for civil unions that mirrors, almost word for word, the legislative structure for marriage,” Kulongoski said.
Tim Smith and Kent Kullby married in Eugene last March and said though the short-term effects of the April 14 court ruling were hurtful, they are confident the battle they are fighting will be won well within their lifetime.
Smith, a small business owner, and Kullby, a city planner, are plaintiffs in Basic Rights Oregon’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Measure 36, the ballot measure passed in November declaring
marriage to be between a man and a woman.
Smith said he does not think it’s possible for a “common ground” to be reached on same-sex marriage because society is intensely divided regarding the issue and each side is adamant that it is correct.
“These are hostile planets at war,” Smith said. “Whatever happens in the court, this issue will go on. One side or another will pursue to the next step, and whatever the outcome there, they’ll proceed to the next step.”
Graham said his organization is not looking to take away any rights from members of the gay and lesbian community; he said it is simply looking to preserve marriage as being an arrangement only a man and woman can enter into.
“Our organization has never gone out and tried to change laws to restrict the rights of gays and lesbians,” Graham said. “We’re just trying to preserve some things that we think are valuable to society
and culture.”
Smith said such beliefs are only rooted in discriminatory thinking and said civil unions are a needed step in the fight for equal rights, but marriage, in the full sense of the word, is the ultimate prize.
“In the end, calling something different is a separate but equal solution,” Smith said. “If we are equal under the law, then why use a
different word?”
The state court ruling affirmed that counties do not have the power to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and both Kullby and Smith agreed that at the local level there isn’t much that can be done other than show support for actions at the state level.
Kullby and Smith were one of the first same-sex couples married in Eugene, along with University adjunct professor Gretchen Miller and her partner, Sarah Hendrickson.
Smith said the biggest thing they can do is to be open as a couple and make themselves visible in the community, something Miller said was an incentive behind why she and Hendrickson held a public wedding last March.
“The point of getting married so publicly is (because) we knew it was just one step in a continual
civil rights (battle),” Miller said.
Miller and Hendrickson held a double wedding with Smith
and Kullby.
Miller, who teaches an administrative law class in the University’s Planning, Public Policy and Management department, said she was not surprised by the court ruling.
“This wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened,” Miller said, referring to the fact that the court decision did not say anything about civil unions.
But Kullby and Smith shared a different opinion about the ruling, saying it was the worst possible decision the court could have made. Smith said ruling against civil unions would have been worse, but it wasn’t in the court’s jurisdiction to do so in that particular case.
Smith said that Basic Rights
Oregon sent out a list of possible scenarios for the court ruling during the days before the decision was
issued and that “the most negative view of what could have
happened with this lawsuit is what happened, and I think that was
unexpected.”
State officials and representatives from both sides of the same-sex marriage debate say the ruling
left the door open for a battle over civil unions.
University law professor Dom Vetri, who was a plaintiff in the case the April court decision ruled on, said the question of how Measure 36 and the ban on same-sex marriage fits in with Article 1 Section 20 of the Oregon Constitution, which mandates equal treatment for all Oregonians, was not answered.
Vetri said he wasn’t surprised at the ruling but said “it was terribly disappointing because the court ignored the fact that there was a
problem in Oregon in the way that some segment of the population has been oppressed.”
Vetri said the debate over civil unions and same-sex marriage is shaping up to be the next big civil rights battle in U.S. history. He said factors such as health-care
privileges, hospital visitation rights and child custody laws are all huge aspects of the same-sex marriage controversy that promise to become more of an issue as the battle
wages on.
“We’ve just got to keep working on it,” Vetri said. “We don’t have a choice in the matter.”
