Senate won't bar partnership registy

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 4, 2008 | by Lisa Riley Roche

The Senate passed a bill Monday aimed at spelling out what benefits local governments can provide to unmarried partners after taking out a provision clarifying hospital visitation rights.

However, even though it's not in the legislation, the Senate unanimously opted to add to the Senate record an intent "not to disturb any hospital visitation rights provided by a municipal registry."

After Monday's 21-7 vote to approve SB299, it's unclear how the House will receive the measure. House Majority Leader David Clark, R- Santa Clara, said there had yet to be much discussion among leadership of the current version of the bill.

"There's a lot of concern about this bill," Clark said. "Right now we're doing Senate bills. If the Senate wants us to take time on this bill, we'll probably take time to debate and discuss it."

Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said SB299 will be added to the Senate's priority list and he plans to discuss it with House leadership.

"It allows us to make progress," Valentine said. "It will stabilize a whole area of law ... this really needs to be accomplished."

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, is a second effort at making sure the state's policy barring same-sex marriage and substantially similar civil unions isn't violated.

It's a response to Salt Lake City's new domestic partner registry, which gives employers that offer domestic partner benefits an easy way to identify such relationships.

SB299 doesn't go so far as to bar such registries, which is what a separate bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, would have done. That bill has since been tabled and is unlikely to resurface.

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, the only openly gay member of the Senate, said he hoped the bill was a first step toward recognizing that the state's 53,000 gays and lesbians need basic benefits.

"We are invisible in Utah law and that is wrong. There are tens of thousands of us," McCoy said.

Families headed by same-sex couples, he said, are paying taxes, raising kids and facing the "exact same kitchen-table issues" as other Utahns but without the same legal protection.

McCoy said Salt Lake's registry isn't an attempt to undermine traditional marriage. And, while Utahns approved adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the Utah Constitution, McCoy said most do not oppose gay and lesbian couples having basic rights.

McCoy said the hospital visitation piece was important to him. It's also part of Salt Lake's registry and was amended into the provision on Friday amid concerns that without such an amendment, Salt Lake would have to remove the provision. However, Bell opposed the amendment which was again taken out of the legislation during Monday's debate.

Bell said it was not needed and the bill was intended to be conceptual, not specific.

"This is kind of a flavor-of-the-month situation," he said, noting other issues could arise.

"It does happen," McCoy said, describing a close friend of his whose partner who was unconscious at a hospital. However, sShe had problems when she tried to visit her partner because her partner's mother disapproved of the relationship.

Buttars referred to that situation, saying it was between the mother and the partner, saying that had "nothing to do with our marriage bill."

Bell said lawmakers should continue to work on "life issues that non-traditional couples and families face" without focusing specifically on gays and lesbians.

"It behooves us to work on these other issues so long as it's done in a neutral way," he said. "We don't want to be mean- spirited."

E-mail: lisa@desnews.com; dbulkeley@desnews.com