I run the risk here of seeming either A) cynical or B) like an ingrate, but so be it.
On Tuesday (yesterday), the State Senate Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs postponed the reading of the Families First bill (or known less prosaically as SB 196, legislation that was introduced by the committee’s chairperson, State Senator Eleanor Sobel (D-Hollywood), which would allow gay couples and—here’s the ‘red herring’ that supporters hope will serve as a sop to fair-minded independents, libertarians, and admirers of old maid spinster sisters everywhere—unmarried Floridians access to important legal protections for themselves and their families.
The bill stalled in committee, when Sobel temporarily postponing a vote after acknowledging it would be defeated. Sobel said she will retool the language to more closely match that of local ordinances permitting domestic partnerships.
As a press release sent out by Equality Florida pointed out, nearly half of Floridians already live in a community with a domestic partnership registry, including Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties, along with “redder” Sunshine States localities like Pinellas, Volusia, and Orange counties, as well as Key West, Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, Tavares, Clearwater, and North Miami.
Locally in the Tri-County area, support for passage of the bill was to be found in all political stripes, among them both former Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti and the man who in November beat him for the job, Sheriff Scott Israel, who released a statement on Monday urging lawmakers to support the bill and equality for all Floridians.
According to Sobel, her Senate co-sponsors, and their supporters, a statewide law would ensure all Floridians “access to protections,” simplifying the process for providing benefits to domestic partners, no matter where they in the state they live.
Critics—and even some of us who like the idea but cringe at the nomenclature—say that the bill is named with an eye to, um, deceiving, with the spirit of the legislation sticking its finger in the eye of the law as it currently exists. This is what is most likely to gum up passage of the bill from committee to a further hearing.
At issue is language which opponents and Well-Meaning Pointer-Outters say may—or does—violate Article I, Section 27 of the Florida Marriage Protection Act (FMPA), which was passed (under the name Amendment 2) in 2008 by 62 percent of state voters, which makes it unconstitutional to create any form of union that may be “treated as marriage” or the “substantial equivalent” of marriage, which would seem to disqualify SB 196 from seeing the light of day. (You will know by the time you’ve read this.)
Sobel acknowledged—although too late to prevent some egg spatter on her face—that the language of FMPA will trump something as vitally needed as her bill, and open it to legal challenges.
THAT HAVING BEEN SAID: There really has never been a better time to try and get the “camel’s nose under the tent,” with a law that at least superficially recognizes that we’re here, we’re, etc. There’s a reason the Supremes are poised to hear cases about DOMA and Prop 8 within a few months’ time, and not JUST because Chief Justice John Roberts is tired of his wife and kids bitching about demographics and destiny (although I have to believe there’s a part of that, even at Scalia’s crib—although, come to think, maybe not at Clarence Thomas’ place).
It also takes place within the larger context of a national conversation about the evils of anti-gay bullying, the presence of the nation’s first no-hold-barred “openly-gay-friendly” Chief Executive (although Bill Clinton truly paved the way, he will always have DOMA hanging around his neck like a dead albatross, something for which LGBT Americans can thank the party of homophobia, the GOP), and within a state that is “coming out of the closet” in recognizing the contributions of its gay Floridians.
The bill’s reading was postponed on the sixth anniversary of the death of Lisa Pond at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Pond’s partner of 18 years (and with whom she had raised four kids), Janice Langbehn, was denied visitation by hospital officials because of Florida’s ‘black hole’ against progress in this vital realm of American fairness and family equality.
That case brought national attention to the plight of LGBT partners and hospital visitation and other rights, and prompted President Obama to issue an Executive Memo that requires hospitals receiving federal Medicaid funding to treat domestic partners as family members. In announcing the change to federal policy, Obama himself telephone Langbehn from Air Force One. (Obama also presented Langbehn—who calls herself an “accidental activist”—with the Presidential Citizens Medal).
Lastly, we have Rick Scott, who is certainly no supporter of the gay “agenda,” but does that mean he must be our foe (something Lincoln said about making friends of our enemies and thereby defeating those same suddenly springs to mind)?
Surely Great Scott—business executive that he once was, and admirer of the bottom line that he remains—isn’t blind to the enormous impact that LGBT tourists and residents alike have to the Sunshine State’s economy and quality of life (I’m guessing he and the Mrs. have lived next to at least ONE gay power couple possessing an immaculate lawn), from Gay Days Orlando to Miami Beach Gay Pride to the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (one of the world’s largest), to PrideFest and Wicked Wilton right here in our—HIS—own Gayborhood. In my experience, no matter how red the Republican, green erases all thoughts about pink.
What can I say—politics makes for strange bedfellows.
