ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 23, 1996 TAG: 9605230075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Hearst Newspapers
NOTE: Lede
President Clinton will sign a GOP bill to restrict same-sex marriages if Congress passes it ``as it is currently written,'' White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry announced Wednesday.
McCurry said Clinton decided to sign the measure after the Justice Department completed a review of Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring states from discriminating against homosexuals.
In that case, the court, by a 6-3 vote, threw out a Colorado constitutional amendment that would have banned local laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination.
The proposed GOP House legislation that Clinton agreed to sign would give states authority to reject the legality of same-sex marriages performed in another state. It would thus free them from having to follow the U.S. Constitution's requirement that they must give ``full faith and credit'' to the laws ``of every other state.''
The measure also would bar federal benefits such as tax breaks, welfare assistance, pensions, health-care coverage and survivors' benefits to same-sex couples even if a state legalized their union.
The legislation, awaiting action by the House Judiciary Committee's panel on the Constitution, would not prohibit a state from conferring legal status on same-sex unions.
McCurry told reporters that Clinton ``would sign that bill if it was presented to him as it is currently written. The president doesn't have objections to the two things the bill does. One, it says that no state is forced to recognize another state's codification of the union. And then the second thing it does is it says that marriage is a union between a single man and a single woman.''
McCurry added that the Justice Department had concluded that the bill would be constitutional.
The White House announcement drew bitter reaction from the gay community. Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay-rights lobbying organization, said, ``It is deeply disappointing that the president has chosen the politically expedient course of action rather than standing up to gratuitous gay-baiting.''
Despite Clinton's long-standing opposition to same-sex marriage, Birch said that ``there is absolutely no need for him to sign this cynically timed and mean-spirited bill, which is aimed at outlawing something that does not even exist.''
The Human Rights Campaign said that its San Francisco members, in the wake of the White House announcement, disinvited Clinton senior adviser George Stephanopoulos, who had agreed to speak at the group's annual dinner June15.
``This is a time to fortify the community,'' said Russ Roeca, co-chairman of the San Francisco event. ``We need voices of strength and hope; and, at the moment, George Stephanopoulos is neither.''
Tracey Conaty, speaking for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called Clinton's decision ``a choice of political expediency over principles'' and ``a total capitulation to the right wing.''
But Robert H. Knight of the conservative Family Research Council, said Clinton's position recognizes that Americans ``reject the radical homosexual agenda and want to see marriage protected, not out of antipathy toward homosexuals, but because marriage is the foundation of civilization and should not be tampered with.''
Knight also said Clinton's stance is ``purely a political accommodation'' aimed at blunting efforts by Republican rival Bob Dole to draw sharp differences between himself and the president.
Clinton voiced personal opposition to same-sex marriages during the 1992 presidential campaign and repeated that view last week.
On May 13, the spokesman said merely that Clinton opposed same-sex marriages because ``he believes this is a time when we need to do things to strengthen the American family.''
On May 14, McCurry said, ``The president believes that marriage as an institution ought to be reserved for a union between one man and one woman.''
Last week, McCurry attacked the GOP for offering the same-sex marriage measure, calling it an effort to ``provoke hostility toward gays and lesbians.'' He added, ``It was an attempt to try to divide Americans on the controversial issue.''
Homosexual marriages are not recognized by any state. But Hawaii's Supreme Court has ruled that a state law prohibiting them violated the state constitution's legal protections against sex discrimination and ordered a lower state court to show ``a compelling state interest'' in keeping the ban. The case is pending before the lower court.
Nine states have outlawed homosexual marriages.
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