Maryland Catholic Conference: Bills that undermine marriage signed into law

I received this email moments ago from the Maryland Catholic Conference. It is self-explanatory.

Senate Bill 566 and Senate Bill 597 to take effect July 1

Dear Advocates,

In the last few weeks, you've heard from us requesting your assistance in contacting Gov. Martin O'Malley and asking him to veto two bills that undermine the legal status of marriage in Maryland. Despite having heard from about 2,000 concerned Catholic citizens about the troubling impact of Senate Bill 566 and Senate Bill 597, the governor signed those measures into law this morning, May 22. Senate Bills 566 and 597, which create a definition of "domestic partnership" in law and treat those relationships as marriages in parts of the state's health and tax statutes, will take effect on July 1.

Below you will find a statement the Conference issued this morning in response to the governor's signing of these bills. Please take a few moments to read about the Church's deep concern over these new laws and share it with friends. Thank you for your continuing support and for making your voice heard on this vitally important issue.

Regards,
Richard J. Dowling
Executive Director

Statement on the Signing of Domestic Partnership Bills

What we witness today is yet another demonstration of how problematic campaign promises can sometimes be. When he was a candidate for the State House, Governor O'Malley told the gay-rights lobby he would sign their domestic-partnership bills into law. But he punched their ticket without first checking where their bus was headed. Now we all know. This morning's signing ceremony puts Maryland on the road to becoming California East.

Some few years ago, California lawmakers assigned to same-sex relationships they called ‘domestic partnerships' virtually all the rights and privileges theretofore reserved by statute to marriages that involve one man and one woman. What the California high court said last week is that the two sorts of relationships cannot co-exist under the same constitution. The court's 4-to-3 opinion says that statutes having the effect of giving two names to the same set of attributes are in violation of the state's constitution and, therefore, that the one man-one woman definition of marriage enacted by California lawmakers is unconstitutional. The practical effect of the ruling is that the marriage designation might soon apply to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples.

Whether or not it will seems to depend on California voters, who will decide the fate of a referendum question on California's November ballot. Voters will be asked to take matters into their own hands by enshrining the one man-one woman definition of marriage in the state's constitution.

While the measures signed today in Annapolis grant marriage-equivalency rights only in the areas of health care and taxation, they start us down the road California has taken. The first domestic partnership bills passed by California's state legislature also related to health care and taxation. Next year and the year after that, Maryland same-sex marriage proponents will be back before the General Assembly, pushing for additional privileges, and if our lawmakers are as compliant as they were this year, they'll get them. It won't be long, then, before Maryland domestic partners - unmarried opposite-sex as well as same-sex couples - are granted all the legal privileges of married couples, and Maryland's high court will be asked the same question its California counterpart decided last week.

But Marylanders do not have the same referendum rights as Californians. If the Maryland Court of Appeals were to follow the California court's lead, a proposed one-man/one-woman amendment to our constitution would have to pass the General Assembly before being referred to the people for final determination. Given the present makeup of the Maryland legislature and despite strong popular support for traditional marriage, there is virtually no chance that this would come to pass. In public testimony given this year to a Senate committee, Maryland's Attorney General supported a same-sex marriage bill. But when he was asked if he would continue to support the measure if its passage were made contingent upon referring it to voters, he said he would not. He was asked why. "Because it would fail," is what he said.

The Maryland-serving bishops' opposition to the measures signed today focuses not so much on the privileges they grant as on the firm conviction that the legal definition of marriage should not be diluted in order to bestow those privileges. The measures' definition of domestic partnerships not only gives same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples a status equivalent to marriage, it also is so broad and ambiguous that it can be extended to the most casual of relationships - relationships that can easily be entered into and just as easily dissolved; relationships that assume scarce few of the obligations associated with committed marriages. Sound public policy should not equate such relationships with the legal institution of marriage. Policies that do so fly in the face of religious traditions that exalt marriage and regard it as sacramental. At a time when communities of faith and society at large strive against formidable cultural forces to address the devastating results of divorce and the dissolution of the family structure, such policies can only prove counter-productive.

None of this is to say that certain of the rights and privileges currently granted by law to persons who are married should not also be made available to couples who are not. But this should and easily might be accomplished in ways that do no damage to the institution of marriage and the high status historically assigned to that institution by our laws. Nor should the rightful prerogatives of families suffer damage.

A law enacted two years ago grants hospital-visitation and medical decision-making rights to unmarried couples who execute advance directives. One of the bills signed today removes the advance-directive requirement. Hereafter, any two 18-year olds engaged in a domestic partnership can grant one another the right to make decisions in matters that neither is likely to have properly contemplated. Should one young partner face a medical emergency or sudden death, the surviving partner would have the legal authority to override parental and sibling rights in deciding such questions as whether to continue or withhold life support, whether body organs should be donated, and whether a deceased partner should be buried or cremated. The other signed measure grants cohabiting couples a financial incentive to avoid the legal commitments of marriage. Neither provides for the dissolution of domestic partnerships, or addresses the standing of prior partners.

Not only because of the assault these measures make on traditional marriage, then, but also because of the problems their application can be expected to pose in real-life circumstances, these bills should never have passed the General Assembly. Having been approved by our state lawmakers, they should not have been signed into law.

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