Colorado House committee OKs civil unions bill with bipartisan support

As expected, Colorado’s House Judiciary Committee approved the Colorado Civil Union Act and set in motion a course to a full debate by the chamber after two stops, likely next week, at other committees for procedural rubber stamping. But the five hour debate was not without a last minute, tearful, surprise.

The bill, introduced in the House by out gay lawmakers Speaker of the House Mark Ferrandino and state Rep. Sue Schafer, would establish state recognition for same-sex couples. Both are Democrats.

“Our nation has a long and proud history of allowing people to live in freedom,” Schafer said this afternoon presenting the bill with Ferrandino.

“I may be Speaker of the House,” Ferrandino said. “But my family does not have equality under the law. We’re not asking for tolerance. You can have your beliefs. What I’m asking for, is that my family and that Rep. Schafer’s family and all LGBT families in Colorado be treated equally under the law.”

The bill passed with bipartisan support, 8-3.

“While on Earth, Jesus asked us to love one another,” state Rep. Carole Murray, a Douglas County Republican, said. “In that spirit, I’ll be a yes vote on this bill.”

Murray said she had to trust the legal system would work out the differences between secular equality and religious freedoms, issues she’s still wrestling with.

But Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said he believed voters should decide the issue.

“I find it odd that after 200-plus years that due process requires this,” he said implying relationship recognition for same-sex couples belongs on the ballot. “I continue to believe the people of Colorado were clear in 2006.”

Voters in 2006 constitutionally defined marriage between a man and a woman and rejected a referendum that would have established domestic partnerships for gay couples.

For many witnesses, like Lisa Green and Shawna Kemppainen, a lesbian couple from Colorado Springs, testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee has become too familiar. They’ve done it three years in a row.

“I’m done pleading,” Green said. “… My right to love is not yours to judge, and my right to equality is not yours to withhold.”

The civil union bill was first introduced by state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, in 2011. A similar House committee killed the bill that year on a party-line vote.

In 2012, state Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, did what she called “simply the right thing to do” just after she voted for the bill, setting up an epic race against the clock to get the bill to the House floor, where there were enough votes to pass it, before the May 9 end of the legislative session mandated by the state Constitution.

While the bill was ushered with bipartisan support through two other Republican-controlled committees that year, then– Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, and his GOP leadership team haphazardly ran out the clock on the bill.

With Democrats now in control of both chambers after the 2012 elections, the bill is ensured passage. Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is inclined to sign the bill.

Civil union licenses, as the legislation is currently written, will begin May 1.

Opponents of the bill argue the bill is too similar to marriage, which Colorado’s constitution prohibits for same-sex couples. Additionally, state Senate Republicans and faith-based opponents raised concerns this bill does not do enough to protect religious freedoms.

“This bill does not protect faith-based child placing agencies — and it’s critical that it does,” said Kellie Fiedorek of the Alliance Defending Freedom organization, an affiliate of the Colorado Springs–based Focus on the Family.

Nicolle Martin, a lawyer representing a Lakewood, Colorado cake baker currently under investigation for violating Colorado’s public accommodations nondiscrimination law for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding, said more business owners will find themselves in similar situations.

She maintained her client does not aim to discriminate against gay men and women, but does not want to participate in a ceremony he doesn’t agree in.

“This isn’t about the cake,” Martin said. “It’s about the message on the cake.”

Organizations like Fiedorek’s and Martin’s have latched onto the fact that this year’s civil union bill is absent of any religious exemptions outside of the First Amendment and those for ordained clergy.

“I missed the memo on why the exemption wasn’t in this year’s bill as it was in last year’s bill,” Martin said.

Mindy Barton, a lawyer and director of the Colorado GLBT Community Center’s legal advocacy program said she rejects the alleged conflict between religious freedoms and gay rights.

“I’m tired of hearing this framework and messaging around civil unions, a state creation of relationship recognition, being a violation of peoples individual freedom of religion,” Barton said. “The Center and personally, I, believe in the U.S. and state constitutions. As an attorney, I live by those provisions and abide by them in my work every day. But if a place of accommodation, a business, puts itself into the stream of commerce it must do business in a non-discriminatory manner.”

Other supporters who testified in favor of the bill included straight and gay Republicans who argued civil unions are inline with conservative values of personal liberty and responsibility.

Prior to the hearing supporters of the legislation rallied on the west steps of the Capitol.

Representing more than 100 faith-based organizations that support the civil union bill, Rev. Mike Morran said there’s no conflict between the Christian religion and civil unions.

“I’m sorry, but you just don’t know everything about real people and the God-given grace of their love,” Morran said. “Get educated, get real or get out of the way.”