California Legislature More Supportive of Gay Rights Bills


   
Sacramento --

State lawmakers have tackled more than a dozen bills this year that expand the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Californians, even as that community's biggest fight, for same sex-marriage, continues to wend its way through the courts.
The bills range from the controversial - a law that mandates the inclusion of the contributions of gays and lesbians in public school books - to the mundane, such as a proposal that would make it easier for some transgender people to get a birth certificate with their new gender.
While many of the proposed laws are still waiting for a final vote or the governor's signature, those that have been taken up in either the Assembly or Senate have passed easily, with the majority of Democrats voting overwhelmingly in support.
Supporters of gay rights say that while much work remains to be done, this year's votes are indicative of the drastic change in tenor at the Capitol in recent years. The Capitol is now home to the largest LGBT legislative caucus in the state's history - seven out of 120 members - and includes Assembly Speaker John PĂ©rez, D-Los Angeles.
"Without a doubt, the tone is different," said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who first arrived in Sacramento as an Assemblyman in 2008. "The debate - probably more so on the Senate side than the Assembly side - has toned down almost entirely. ... And in both houses, LGBT civil rights bills are passing nearly unanimously among Democrats. That wasn't always the case. It was a struggle to get a simple majority just a couple of years ago."

Support increasing

Mario Guerrero, government relations director for the gay-rights group Equality California, said he's also noticed increasingly vocal support from straight lawmakers.
"When our organization first started (in 1998) we could hardly find a legislator who would author a bill, and now we seem to be at the other end of the spectrum," he said. "We've had an increase in LGBT elected officials, and also in straight, supportive allies who would love to author an LGBT equal rights bill."
Yet no matter what the issue, nearly all of the votes this year have broken down along party lines, with the vast majority of Republican lawmakers staunchly opposed - save for GOP Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a candidate for San Diego mayor who has consistently broken with his caucus to support gay rights measures. Fletcher, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, first made his position clear in 2010 when he made an impassioned speech against the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Opponents often quiet

Leno said that partisan split is not universal across the country, pointing out that Republican lawmakers were key to New York's recent legalization of same-sex marriage while "the most minor LGBT civil rights bills in the California Legislature remain strictly partisan."
Still, the nature of the opposition appears to have changed. In the Assembly, debates over these bills - such as with Leno's SB48, which requires the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans to be included in public school textbooks - focused not on moral objections to homosexuality, but on government intrusion into citizen's lives.
In the Senate, Leno said, opponents often stay silent.
Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the Assembly Republican Caucus, said GOP lawmakers have opposed the various gay rights bills "for reasons ranging from undermining the will of the voters, taking away local control and duplicating existing law."
Advocates say the partisan nature of these fights illustrate gay rights supporters' continuing challenges outside of marriage laws.
"There's a lot of work to do, and one of the things I am kind of sad about is that our community, by and large, isn't aware of how many inequities continue to exist," Guerrero said.

 

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