Sacramento, Calif. – The California Assembly voted Tuesday to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, making the state’s legislature the first in the nation to deliberately approve same- sex marriages and handing a political hot potato to an already- beleaguered Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supports domestic partnerships but opposes same-sex marriage.
After a vehement floor debate, the state Assembly passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, which recasts the definition of marriage as between “two persons,” not between a man and a woman. The state Senate passed the bill last week.
“There are moments in the history of any movement when the corner is turned,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a gay-rights group. “This is it.”
Advocates of the bill, including Christine Chavez-Delgado, granddaughter of Cesar Chavez and an organizer of the United Farm Workers of America, and Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, argued that the bill was fitting of California’s history. In 1948, the California’s Supreme Court became the first state court to strike down a law prohibiting interracial marriage.
But opponents, including GOP conservatives, have argued that the law must be stopped because it constitutes another assault on the sanctity of the family.
Californians passed a Defense of Marriage act in 2000, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and the state has emerged as a front line in the gay-marriage battle ever since.
Tuesday’s 41-35 vote goes further than other states, such as Vermont and Connecticut, which have passed legislation allowing more strictly defined “civil unions.” And it differs from Massachusetts, the only state to grant full marriage rights to gay couples, because its regulations were passed by order of the state’s courts.
