Supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage clashed before a Maryland Senate committee yesterday, with traditionalists invoking religious convictions and gay rights advocates describing their cause as a civil rights struggle.
The lengthy hearing, which drew dozens of speakers on both sides of the most divisive social issue the General Assembly will take up this year, was headlined by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), who became Maryland’s first elected statewide official to endorse legislation allowing same-sex marriage.
Gansler’s office had successfully defended the state against a lawsuit by gay couples who sought to overturn a law prohibiting same-sex marriage. But yesterday, the former prosecutor from Montgomery County called same-sex marriage a “moral imperative” and a “basic matter of fairness.”
“This bill is fundamentally about equality,” Gansler told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It would be wrong for me to have this job knowing there’s something so wrong in our society and just ignore it.” He said qualms about same-sex unions seem to be limited to older people: “For the younger generation, this is a non-issue.”
He has it all wrong, but this is hardly news. The issue is not about civil rights nor about equality.
The only question is how far left the legislature has become and how hard the att. general will use his position to push the homophile agenda. LM
I think the Attorney General is looking at the question as a moral issue. Discrimination is wrong. The other theme raised in Mr. Gansler’s testimony and reflected in testimony is the generation shift.
There is only a slim chance that the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will report favorably on the bill, but there might be a different story in a few weeks when a much younger House Judiciary Committee takes up the matter.