by Yusef Najafi
April 8, 2009
Same-gender couples married in states or countries where marriage equality is already the law will soon be recognized by the District as legally married, should the strong support the D.C. City Council demonstrated for such a move make it past the mayor and congressional oversight.
With Councilmember Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) absent, though a co-introducer of the amendment, the 12 present members voted unanimously April 7 to approve an amendment drafted by Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At large) to the Disclosure to the United States District Court Act of 2009, which in part now states: ”A marriage legally entered into in another jurisdiction between two persons of the same sex that is recognized as valid in that jurisdiction … shall be recognized as a marriage in the District.”
During the amendment’s first reading that morning in the Council chambers of the John A. Wilson Building, Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who is gay, said it’s time D.C. sends a clear message to same-gender couples married in other jurisdictions.
”They want an answer to a simple question: Is my marriage valid in D.C.?
”For years now, we have not had a clear answer to that question. … This would clarify it beyond any doubt,” Graham said. ”We all remember the Spagnoletti memo that we waited for, month after month after month.”
Robert J. Spagnoletti was D.C.’s attorney general in 2004 when former Mayor Anthony Williams asked him to draft his legal opinion regarding whether D.C. should recognize same-gender marriages from other jurisdictions. Williams never shared that opinion, made arguably obsolete with his departure and Adrian M. Fenty winning the mayor’s office in 2006.
”It isn’t as if we haven’t been patient. We have been patient. We have waited, waited, waited for this clarification. And now I think it is absolutely necessary that this Council take the step that Mr. Mendelson is proposing along with others and say that a marriage valid elsewhere is a marriage valid in the District of Columbia, except for certain clearly defined, narrowly defined exceptions relating to age and other issues.”
Graham said he’s certain the Council’s vote will generate controversy.
”There is undoubtedly going to be a reaction, but I am absolutely convinced that we are doing the right thing.”
All but one of the 13 Council members, Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7), had signed off on the amendment by Tuesday. But before the vote, she too was convinced to offer her support as a co-introducer.
”We do stand for social justice and in all fairness that is right,” she said.
Bob Summersgill, a former officer of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, who has been involved with D.C.’s legislative process since 1992 when he began work to reform the city’s sodomy law, attended the Tuesday meeting. After the vote he said he was elated.
”I think this is huge. I think this is fantastic,” Summersgill said. ”We won’t be issuing our own marriage licenses, but you will be able to take the train to Connecticut.”
In October, Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to legally marry.
Part of the reason why Summersgill says he doesn’t expect any roadblocks regarding D.C.’s amendment to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions is that the amendment was written for a bill that has already gone through hearings.
”So there will be no public witnesses, no hearings, nothing,” he explained.
A second vote is expected to take place on May 5 before the amendment goes to Fenty to be signed.
”I’m sure he will sign it. The mayor is not going to pick a fight on this and oppose the Council when they have a veto-proof majority. I think there’s no question about that.”
Mayor Fenty has also gone on record in support of marriage equality. The final hurdle is congressional oversight.
”[Congress] could act during that time, or anytime later, to do anything bad to us,” Summersgill said after the vote. ”But my hope is on this one, where we’re just recognizing other states’ marriages, that they won’t do anything.”
Another move at the April 7 legislative meeting also brought the District closer to recognizing other jurisdictions’ domestic partnerships, civil unions, and the like. Mendelson’s Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination of Parentage Act of 2009 would grant such partnerships the ”rights and responsibilities” of D.C. domestic partnerships. That measure was unanimously approved during its final reading.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Councilmember David Catania (I-At large), who is gay, cited his own work on a potential marriage-equality bill while commending Mendelson’s efforts.
”It’s certainly no secret that I have been working on legislation that would take us a little further,” Catania said. ”I think this is an important and consequential step in that journey…. Here we are today, the District, not exactly on the cutting edge, but at the forefront.”
Councilmember Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) implied that while the Mendelson amendment has her support, she’s more than ready to support legislation for full marriage equality in the District.
”This is a matter of fundamental fairness, it’s a mater of equality, it’s a matter of right,” she said. ”I eagerly and enthusiastically support this measure, but I await — impatiently, I must say — our further movement for equal rights, and for a true equal-rights marriage bill for all.”
By Will O'Bryan on April 9, 2024
READ THIS COLUMN IN THE MAGAZINE
Charade is an incredible movie. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in early 1960s Paris. A murder, a missing fortune, a cast of luminaries beyond Hepburn and Grant, and a soundtrack by Henry Mancini. It's so good.
And that dialogue! Among the best lines comes from Hepburn's Regina Lampert, complaining to friend Sylvie about the state of her lackluster marriage. Sylvie advises that this season's fashions could help her meet -- ahem -- new "friends" to take her mind off her hollow marriage. Regina, an American transplant to France, responds, "I admit I came to Paris to escape 'American provincial,' but that doesn't mean I'm ready for 'French traditional.'" So good!
By Randy Shulman on March 12, 2024 @RandyShulman
READ THIS STORY IN THE MAGAZINE
"It's really sad, isn't it?" says Ethan Coen. "That we can't call it that."
Coen is lamenting the fact that his latest movie, the magnificently spry, lesbian-centric jaunt Drive-Away Dolls, was unable to be released under its original moniker: "Drive-Away Dykes."
"It was something just for commercial reasons," adds Tricia Cooke, who co-wrote the film with Coen and edited the finished product. "There are movie theaters that won't release the movie with that title and the MPA kind of dictates what your title can be. We were told we couldn't use it."
By Randy Shulman on March 12, 2024 @RandyShulman
Editor's Note: This in-depth interview with David Mixner, who passed away on Monday, March 11, 2024, at the age of 77, originally appeared in the issue of July 29, 2004. Photography by Todd Franson.
"You want a soundbite?"
David Mixner grins.
"I'll give you a soundbite. I'm a man who's devoted forty years of his life -- sometimes at great validation and sometimes at great pain -- to the struggle for freedom and human rights.
"You know, when I was a child growing up," he continues, "we didn't have television, but we got Life magazine. And it opened the outside world to us. As a kid I said, 'I want to live the history of my times. I want to witness it.' And then I got to a second level where I said, 'God, if I could just meet and shake the hands of the people making the history of my times, I'd be happy.' And then I said to myself, 'If I could just be a tiny footnote in the history of my times.'
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