Maryland Same-sex Marriage Bill to be Introduced This Week

On Top Magazine is reporting that openly gay Maryland State Senator Rich Madaleno has said that he is expecting legislation to be introduced this week that would lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage in my home state. Maryland law already allows for the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in neighboring Washington DC and other states, countries or jurisdictions where is is legal.

A gay marriage bill will be introduced in the Maryland Senate this week, Senator Rich Madaleno told On Top Magazine during a brief telephone interview on Monday.

The 45-year-old openly gay Democrat is the lead sponsor of the legislation in the Senate.
Lawmakers in each chamber will introduce separate bills in order to expedite the process during Maryland's brief 90-day session, which began last Wednesday.

Chances of passage are “the best it's ever been,” Madaleno said. “We had a very successful election in Maryland on this issue. We brought in a number of new people who are committed to this issue in both chambers. In the state Senate we enlarged the Democratic majority, which is a rarity in 2010.”

“It was a transformative election in Maryland on this issue,” he added.

While Madaleno agreed with Governors Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Andrew Cuomo of New York that gay marriage can be an economic issue, he insisted that backers in Maryland continue to frame marriage equality mostly as a matter of civil rights.

Previous attempts to legalize gay unions have suffered setbacks in the Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee, but new assignments have boosted the number of supporters on the 11-member panel to six, paving the way for such a bill to reach the Democrat-controlled Senate floor.

Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley has pledged to sign a gay marriage bill into law if approved by lawmakers.

On a personal note to my sisters: Just so we're clear, this does not mean that I will be moving back to Maryland or that Paul and I will be making a mad dash to the alter at some over-the-top family affair planned by you. Politics aside, the decision to get married is a personal one, whether the couple is gay or straight. Although I'm fighting for the right to marry, I hate weddings. I'd much rather get married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas at the all night Chapel O' Love.

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Poll: Majority of Marylanders Favor Same-sex Marriage

The Washington Post reports that recent polling shows that 46% of  respondents to a poll on same-sex marriage in Maryland were in favor and 44% were opposed. 10% had no opinion (HUH?)

Most interesting is that 55%  of those polled indicated that if a same-sex couple marries in another state, that marriage should be legally recognized in Maryland.

The neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland are separated by the Potomac River and about a century of social progress. People living in the DC suburbs of Northern Virginia can get to the Maryland side of the river by wading about 20 yards across the Potomac in certain parts of Great Falls, Va., where my sister Betsy and her family live.

In the sleepy little town of Piney Point in southern Maryland, where the Potomac meets the Chesapeake Bay, my sister Jane can sit on the back porch of her waterfront home and look out across the river at the Virginia shoreline over a mile away. To me this is so symbolic of the difference between Maryland and Virginia. So politically and culturally alike in the north, miles apart in the south. So why do I live in Southwestern Virginia? Because it's where I'm needed.

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Is Virginia's Homophobia Hurting Its Economy?

The Washington Post reports in Saturday's edition that a bidding war in the DC Metro area to attract aerospace and defense manufacturing giant Northrop Grumman has taken an interesting turn of events with a queer twist. In January the world's fourth largest defense contractor announced plans to relocate from the Los Angeles area to the Washington, DC area by the end of 2011. Naturally both Maryland and Virginia would love to be the new home state of the company that ranked 76 on the Fortune 500 in 2008.

According to The Post, LGBT rights groups and the state of Maryland are pressuring Northrop Grumman not to choose Virginia based on the commonwealth's anti-gay Marriage Amendment and Gov. Bob McDonnell's failure to include LGBT state workers in the executive order he signed earlier this month banning workplace discrimination.

The Post reports: In a letter sent Thursday to the company's CEO, Maryland State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery) argued his state's stand on gay rights better mirrors the company's own longstanding commitment to gay and lesbian employees.

"Here in Maryland, we value our gay and lesbian citizens as part of a diverse population that makes the state strong," Madaleno wrote. "Virginia is doing the opposite and letting its LGBT citizens -- and those considering whether to move and work there -- know that they and their families are unwelcome second-class citizens. And they are counting on corporations like yours not to care."

The Los Angeles-based company is currently deciding between Virginia, Maryland and the District as a new home for its 300 top executives, running an unusually public contest among the three.

Both Madaleno and Equality Virginia have written letters to Northrop Grumman CEO, Wesley Bush urging the defense contractor to pick Maryland and accusing Virginia Governor McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of turning back the clock on civil rights, while Maryland's attorney general announced this week that the state will recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Northrop Grumman has consistently received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign for its workplace protections of LGBT employees.

The Post article contiues, Tucker Martin, a spokesman for McDonnell, responded that companies can enact the same corporate policies for their own employees in Virginia as in other states. He jabbed back at the Maryland rhetoric, insisting Virginia has been winning jobs because it doesn't have the "high taxes and excessive government interference and regulations found in some neighboring states."

"This Maryland legislator isn't really interested in job-creation," Martin said. "If he was, he would spend his time trying to enact Virginia's model of low taxes, limited regulation and strong right-to-work laws."

In other words, the governor of Virginia is abdicating his responsibility to protect the citizens of his own state because private employers are free to choose whether or not to discriminate against their employees. Write that down and remember it every election day (because we have them every year), including the one that will give you the opportunity to replace Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli.

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Maryland Can Recognize Out of State Same-Sex Marriages

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Add my home state of Maryland to the growing list of states that are moving to fairness and equal treatment under the law for all its citizens. On Wednesday, Maryland Attorney General, Douglas F. Gansler released a long awaited statement saying that under current state law, there is nothing preventing the Free State from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Maryland law does allow domestic partnerships that offer some, but not all of the rights extended to married couples, but it is still illegal to perform same-sex marriages in the state.

The Baltimore Sun reports:
With the ruling, state agencies will be required to extend all benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy to married gay couples. These could include health insurance expansion, spousal legal immunities, property rights, the ability to file wrongful-death suits and perhaps some tax benefits, experts said yesterday.

"There is no law in Maryland that says we don't recognize out-of-state marriages between same-sex couples," Gansler said. "Based on the law and the state of the law in Maryland and the Constitution of the United States, this is what the law is." 

"What we say in this opinion is a prediction, not a prescription" as to how a court would interpret the law, Gansler wrote. "While the matter is not free from all doubt, in our view, the Court is likely to respect the law of other states and recognize a same-sex marriage contracted validly in another jurisdiction."

So what is a queer Maryland couple to do if they want to get gay married? In some neighborhoods, it will be as simple as crossing the street and entering the District of Columbia, where same-sex marriage will become legal next week.   

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DC Gay Marriage Law Takes Effect Today

At 12:01 a.m. the District of Columbia began recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. The controversial law was passed in May and faced opposition from the city's religious leaders and accused stalker, DC City Council member Marion Barry.

Tuesday's Washington Post features a Q & A to help DC's LGBT community sort it all out.

In a related story, Maryland's governor, Martin O'Malley said on radio station WTOP's "Ask The Governor" that he is open to following the district's example.

"I think that it's very difficult to deny equal rights to people when it comes to rights that are disbursed by a government rather than a faith or a church. If the person has these rights under another state, I think we're sort of pressed to deny those rights. So, yes, we probably should respect those rights."