ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland fell short Friday amid Republican opposition and misgivings by some Democrats in the deeply Catholic state.
A final vote had been expected in the House, but the overwhelmingly Democratic chamber’s leaders instead withdrew it. A confluence of factors helped fracture Democratic support, including a split among black lawmakers, the opposition of churches and trouble by some freshman lawmakers in determining what their constituents wanted.
“The vote would have been very close,” said Democratic House Speaker Michael Busch minutes after lawmakers returned the bill to a House committee on a voice vote, effectively killing it for the year.
The unexpected move came after two weeks of intense lobbying that included Busch meeting with delegates to secure votes. He said Democrats would try again next year.
The bill to make Maryland the sixth state to allow same-sex marriage already had passed the Senate, and the governor said he would have signed it. Before this year, measures to extend full marriage rights to same-sex couples had never made it as far.
The Senate narrowly approved the measure two weeks ago, voting 25-21 to send the bill to the House after adding language to keep religious groups from being forced to officiate at same-sex weddings.
But the bill hit trouble in the House two weeks ago after a committee had to delay a series of votes on the issue. It ended with Busch and his lieutenants deciding it was better to save a final vote for next year rather than put delegates on the record with a failed vote this year.
Some predicted that, if passed, the measure would have gone to a referendum in the widely Catholic state.
“I would have hoped that we could have resolved this issue and then let the people decide,” said Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, after the House killed the measure.
Senate President Thomas Mike Miller had said he believed voters would have rejected same-sex marriage in such a referendum.
Democratic Delegate Curt Anderson said House leaders failed to keep track of where each of the party’s members stood, hampering efforts to rally support. Democrats hold 98 seats of the 141-seat House. “That system was not in place for this bill, and I think that there just wasn’t enough time to get a good count,” Anderson said.
Delegate Keiffer Mitchell, the grandson of legendary NAACP lobbyist Clarence Mitchell Jr., said the debate was about civil rights.
“It is a civil-rights issue when we as a state and a government deny equal protection under the law,” he said.
But fellow Democratic Delegate Emmett Burns, a black pastor and gay-marriage opponent, said the struggles of gays could not match the violence against blacks during the civil-rights era. “Those who desire to ride on our coattails are historically incorrect,” Burns said.
