Conn. lawmakers ratify gay-marriage decision
Governor will sign bill passed by lawmakers
HARTFORD - Connecticut lawmakers voted late yesterday to update the state's marriage laws to conform with last fall's landmark state Supreme Court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. A spokesman for Governor M. Jodi Rell said she will sign the bill into law.
The bill's was passed six months after the state's highest court ruled 4-3 that same-sex couples have the right to wed in Connecticut, rather than accept a 2005 civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples.
The new law redefines marriage in Connecticut as the legal union of two people, and it also transforms civil unions into marriages on Oct. 1, 2010, unless they have been annulled or dissolved. State law previously defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
"It feels so good; it really does feel like the book is closing," said Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights group.
Three other states - Massachusetts, Vermont, and Iowa - also allow same-sex marriage.
The legislation strips language from a 1991 state antidiscrimination law that says Connecticut does not condone "homosexuality or bisexuality or any equivalent lifestyle," require the teaching of homosexuality or bisexuality "as an acceptable lifestyle," set quotas for hiring gay workers, or authorize recognition of same-sex marriage.
In an effort to appease some foes, lawmakers said religious organizations and associations are not required to provide services, goods, or facilities for same-sex wedding ceremonies.
"We wanted to make it completely clear that the state of Connecticut fully embraces not only the rights of same-sex couples to marry, but we fully embrace the rights and protections afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Connecticut Constitution to the free exercise of religion," said Senator Andrew McDonald, a Stamford Democrat and gay marriage proponent.
Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, which opposes gay marriage, considered the amendment "a significant improvement" because the original bill did not include any protections for religious groups.
"It made a bad bill better," he said.
