February 24, 2003

gmh JUDICIARY COMMITTEE 12:00 P.M.

PRESIDING CHAIRMEN: Senator McDonald

MEMBERS PRESENT:

SENATORS: Murphy, Kissel, Coleman, Daily,

Roraback

REPRESENTATIVES: Lawlor, Stone, Farr, Abrams,

Berger, Bernhard, Boukus,

Cafero, Candelaria, Cocco,

Conway, Diamantis, Doyle, Fox,

Fritz, Giegler, Godfrey, Green,

Hamzy, Hovey, Hyslop, Labriola,

McMahon, Michele, Olson,

O'Neill, Peters, Rowe, Serra,

Spallone

SENATOR MCDONALD: Please take your seat. I believe there is an announcement being made that we are convening. We are going to start now.

Just briefly, I want to, first of all, welcome everybody here today to the public hearing on the three bills that are currently before the committee on gay marriage, civil unions, and defense of marriage.

We are going to have a lot of individuals who are going to be testifying today and I wanted to -- and in order to try and accommodate as many people as possible, we have to have a couple of ground rules that we're going to need to stick firm to.

The first is that speakers will be limited to three minutes. And unfortunately, we are going to have to be very rigorous about enforcing that three minute rule with about a ten to maybe second leeway. When you hear the bell go off at the desk, we'll give you about ten seconds to wrap it up, but we will have to cut you off if you exceed that and I apologize for that in advance.

I also want to just mention that we are going to have a lot of people who are going to be talking today who have personal stories and in some cases, very strong emotional stories. I want to ask you to please hold your applause or in the alternative, other expressions of commentary on the individuals who are testifying. Heckling just will not be permitted. Booing is not permitted. Clapping, we would prefer it not happen. We will all move much more rapidly if that is the case.

If somebody has said something that you already agree with, please don't feel a need to repeat it. We will, obviously have copies of testimony that have been submitted to the committee. There is also a transcript of the entire proceedings that will be made available to all members of the Legislature.

I should also let you know that members of the committee will be coming and going. You may see them often times rushing off to other meetings that are, unfortunately, scheduled at the same time. sometimes there's a requirement that they do work from their office. You should know that there are several television cameras here and above us that are broadcasting this hearing live throughout the building and indeed, to the public in Connecticut.

So, legislators are often going to be hearing your testimony or seeing you on video, but may not actually be present.

Second of all, if you have a cell phone, turn it off. If you have a pager, turn it off or least put it on vibrate. That will be very disturbing if we have cell phones going off.

I should also mention that we are going to be alternating between individuals who are going to be speaking in favor and opposed as they were signed up on the sign up sheets. If you are interested in testifying and have not yet signed up, you can do so over by the door. If there are people who need extra room, there are overflow rooms in 1D and 2D and I should also mention that we have scheduled this public hearing to end promptly at 6:00 o'clock, p.m. So we hope, if everybody cooperates, that everybody will have an opportunity to speak before the conclusion of the hearing.

There are going to be opportunities for individual members of the committee to ask questions of people who are testifying. And I would just ask members of the committee to keep your comments short and your questions even shorter. Please just get immediately to the question that you have on your mind so that we can keep the question and answer period within a reasonable timeframe.

Are there any other comments? Again, please be respectful of everybody who is testifying and we'll get through this a lot quicker.

Thank you very much. Representative.

REP. CONWAY: Senator, Representative Conway. At the present time we have this hearing going on, and in the Transportation Committee we have another hearing going on with the motorcycle helmets and so forth. So I'll be going back and forth.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

REP. CONWAY: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Any other questions or comments from members of the committee? Okay, hearing none, we will begin. The first hour of the testimony is reserved for department heads and chief elected officials of the State and the first individual on the sign-up list is Mayor Dannell Malloy from Stamford.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Good afternoon, Mr. McDonald and it's great to be with you and Mr. Lawlor and the entire committee.

I appear before you as the Mayor of the City of Stamford, as a married father with three sons and I'm here to speak in favor of civil unions.

I want you to understand that the City of Stamford has extended domestic partnership benefits to all of its employees through the collective bargaining agreements we've reached with our employees, but that simply does not go far enough.

The time has come for us to do away with ancient prejudices which have impacted adversely people's lives for entirely too long.

As you are well aware, there are some 588 rights and responsibilities that attach themselves to civil union relationships. It is time to allow people who willingly enter into those relationships to share in those rights and responsibilities.

There simply is no reason not to treat people fairly when it comes to their legal, their social, and their economic rights.

As a city that has extended domestic partnership benefits, I can tell you that this is not placed an administrative burden on us, has not precipitously impacted our finances in any way, and in fact, I think has made us an employer of choice. Just as I believe that if Connecticut was to become the second state to extend this package of benefits to its citizens, we would become a state of choice.

There is a very good book by a gentleman, Mr. Florida, who has written about the economy of the future. The economy of the future will -- communities who want to benefit of the economy of the future will reside in states and cities that are open to different ideas, open to different people, recognize our differences and allow us to work within those differences.

This is an important step to take to improve ourselves as a state, to make us more economically viable, to become a location of choice, to be viewed by the rest of the country and perhaps the rest of the world as a place that treats its citizens fairly.

Let me tell you that the citizens that I know and work with on a daily basis in the City of Stamford ask that you strongly consider enacting this law as quickly as possible. Again, there is no reason to have different sets of legal, social, and economic rights for different classifications of people based on ancient prejudices.

Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Senator -- Mayor, Mayor, you've got a couple of questions.

I know you have to -- you're supposed to be in Stamford in fifteen minutes. I don't know how that's going to happen.

Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you. Hi, it's good to see you. It's been quite a while since we served together on the Sheff vs. O'Neill Study Committee.

Would you draw any lines and I'm specifically -- you talk about ancient prejudices.

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Sure.

SEN. KISSEL: And I think about family relationships. We have laws on the books that say first cousins can't get married.

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Well, --

SEN. KISSEL: Wait. And it's my understanding that that is primarily for biological reasons. If the genetic composition of two individuals is too close and they procreate, there's a greater chance that their children would have birth defects and problems. But since a same sex union or a same sex marriage or a civil union is not for the reason of procreation, that if there was an artificial insemination it would not necessarily -- it would be from the spouse, that that issue is off the table.

And so would you draw any lines or would you consider that an ancient prejudice, as well?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Well, as the Senator knows, I'm here to speak specifically with respect to the bill that's been raised. And I support that bill as it has been, in fact, raised.

If the Senator is interested in amending it to any degree, obviously that's your prerogative. Let me say this about the issue that you've raised.

I believe it's time that we take appropriate steps in the direction of recognizing relationships. You know, when we talk about recognizing relationships, what we're really talking about is recognizing reality. These relationships exist across our state. They exist in the houses, in the apartments next to where we live.

What we're really talking about is extending the benefits that you and I and others will enjoy from a set of relationships to another class of people who deserve just as much as we do to share in those relationships.

SEN. KISSEL: Mayor, I appreciate that, but --

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: So with respect to --

SEN. KISSEL: -- could you answer my question?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Yes. With respect to gene pools, you know I have to honestly tell you that I have not reflected significantly on the impact of the gene pool, but what I have reflected on is the impact of fairness and fundamental fairness and the extension of appropriate legal rights.

The idea that someone --

SEN. KISSEL: Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry. I know you're busy and we have a lot of people, but I'm not talking about that. You gave your statement on that and I understand where you're coming from. I'm saying it's our position, if we're going to go down this road, to draw appropriate lines.

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Yes.

SEN. KISSEL: And so if we do away with the ancient prejudice that a marriage is between a man and a woman, what reason would we have to draw any lines between family members? Because if love makes a family and you have first cousins and there's not that issue on the table, why should we draw a line there as well? And I want you to answer that specific question. We're talking about drawing lines. And if you're saying let's keep those old laws, that's fine. If you're saying, let's re-examine them, that's fine. But that's the issue. Where do we draw the line once we disregard these "ancient prejudices"?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Senator, I'm going to be very clear. I never used the word "marriage", you did. Secondly, I also want to be very clear, I support the legislation as it's been drafted, taking into the consideration the points the drafters obviously took into consideration in looking at the relative nature of marriage as it exists for some and the extension of those benefits to people in civil unions.

So to have those as somewhat in parallel or to reflect one another, I'm certainly not offended by it and I'm certainly not appearing before you, Senator, to advocate that we have a different set of regulations applying to civil unions than we do to marriage.

SEN. KISSEL: But I don't understand that. I don't understand, if we're taking away -- if one is an ancient prejudice, then everything should be on the table. Are you saying some ancient prejudices we're going to leave there and others we're going to complete disregard?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: You know, Senator, all I'm saying is perhaps I've not reflected to the degree that you have in support of this legislation.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Senator.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Representative Farr.

REP. FARR: Just one quick question. You're testifying in behalf of civil unions, but not gay marriages. Is that correct?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: I have appeared before this committee in defense of civil unions, that's correct.

REP. FARR: But not same sex marriages?

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: That would be a correct interpretation of what I'm saying.

REP. FARR: That you are not in favor of same sex marriages, you're in favor of civil unions?

You said you didn't want to use the word "marriage".

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: This is a legislative process. Those have been raised. The bill that I'm here to address and what I believe is a substantial step in extending appropriate benefits to all of our citizens is the one concerning civil unions.

There are other bills, one of which uses the word "marriage". I'm not here speaking in favor of that. I'm here on civil unions.

REP. FARR: Okay, I'm just clarifying. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much, Mayor.

MAYOR DANNELL MALLOY: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is State Comptroller Nancy Wyman.

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, and distinguished members of this wonderful committee.

For the record, I am State Comptroller Nancy Wyman.

You know, in June of 1958, Mildred Jetta and Richard Loving were married in Washington, D.C. and returned shortly thereafter to their home in the State of Virginia. In January of 1959, the Circuit Court of Caroline County, Virginia, sentenced them to one year in prison unless they packed their belongings, sold their property, and left the State of Virginia, promising not to return for at least 25 years.

You see, Mildred and Richard were of different races and under Virginia law, marriage was not allowed.

At that time, government told its citizens who they could love, who they could marry. Through our eyes today, the restriction seems outrageous.

When we tell our children this story, they look at us with doubt, but it did happen and it was only forty years ago.

It's hard to believe that there was ever a day when government told us where we could live, where we could eat or drink, where we could sit on a bus, or where we could worship. It's hard to believe that we ever debated whether a Roman Catholic should or could become President of the United States.

But it happened and it's still happening.

I'm here to speak in favor of legal recognition of same gender couples and against any and all attempts to create a state defense of marriage act known as DOMA.

You have the opportunity to right a wrong this session. You have the opportunity to do the right thing. I am aware, as are most of you, that this has been called a "politically risky issue". But I am also aware of this body's basic human commitment to wipe out injustice wherever it is found.

Over the years I have come to know many of you very well. I have seen you take bold and historic steps simply because it was the right thing to do. Elections be damned.

We need to work with leaders from both parties to create legal recognition for same gender couples. We can always compromise when we're fighting over money, well, not always. But there can never be a compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

By creating a legal contract in recognition for same gender couples, you will guarantee, in fact, restore to them the same rights, along with the same obligations as married heterosexual couples. If we do not support civil rights for every American, we will have to live with ourselves in or out of politics for the rest of our lives.

How will we answer the question of our children or our grandchildren when asked why we didn't stand up and speak when confronted with this choice?

I just want to bring to mind that Germany, Canada, and France have adopted all civil unions, as well. If you want and need the strength, look at Howard Dean. He did vote and under this whole time, got a twelve point margin.

Let me just remind you that this is not about strange people, this is about our friends, our family, our acquaintances that are asking for this help now to be able to go forward.

Please vote against DOMA and vote for the kindness that we should be giving to all people.

Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Representative Farr.

REP. FARR: Again, there are three bills on the agenda. One is civil -- I guess what would be called civil unions, although the caption doesn't actually have that on it. Another is same sex marriages. And the other is the DOMA bill.

Are you saying that you support the passage of same sex marriages or the civil union?

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: I would support anything, at this point, that the Legislature would pass to give equal rights to same sex marriages or relationships. I don't believe that we should be distinguishing between either, but if the Legislature feels more comfortable voting for civil unions, at this point I would support civil unions.

REP. FARR: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Good afternoon, Madam Comptroller.

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Good afternoon, Senator.

SEN. KISSEL: Again, I have the same philosophical question and it's not meant to be hostile, it's meant to be probing.

And for example, let's say we passed either civil unions or same sex marriage and you have two first cousins, either female or male and they say, we love each other, we're committed to each other and State of Connecticut, we can't procreate. So the concerns that you have about our closeness of familiar relationship is really inconsequential. So, we want the same civil rights as everybody else.

And so my question is, if we go forward down this path, if we're taking away one line, we have to establish, I would think, some other lines to have some definition to where we're going and I'm asking, would you draw any lines? Would you change any of those other proscriptions or do you find that unnecessary at this point in time?

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Senator, I don't know the background, truthfully, because I'm not a doctor of why that was originally in the law. I think that you, as a Legislature, would have to look at it, but for what I'm here for today, is saying to you that the same sex relationships should be recognized the same way that a heterosexual relationship.

I have a slight medical background, but I do not talk about going into the genders -- into --

SEN. KISSEL: Well again, I don't think you need any medical background. What I'm saying is, the only reason I can see for those laws on the books is (a) tradition, religious basis for that, you know, you shouldn't get married to someone too close or medical, assuming now that procreation is not a component of marriage of civil union, then the whole medical issue is off the table. That's why you don't need to be a doctor to answer this, because that's no longer an issue.

So, --

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Senator --

SEN. KISSEL: -- all we're left with is tradition in statute. And so proponents are saying this marriage concept is old and ancient and prejudicial, let's throw it out. So I'm saying what's to keep us from --

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: I have not said --

SEN. KISSEL: -- throwing out anything else with it?

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: I have not said throw out marriage at all. And I don't believe that I said -- what I am saying is that I don't believe that we base laws on only tradition. The reason that there must have been a reason that they put in there why first cousins cannot marry. I don't know what that is. I'm sure it's not because of tradition that it was there and until I know the background on that, I would prefer not to comment on that specific one.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay, I'll let it go, but again, other than a medical basis because of procreation and the problems with birth defects and problems, other than that, if that is off the table, I can -- the same arguments regarding man and woman could be made first cousin to first cousin and I don't understand why we're throwing out one line and not addressing the issues regarding other lines that we have.

But thank you, Madam.

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you.

STATE COMPTROLLER NANCY WYMAN: Thank you all very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: I should point out, for members of the committee, that as was referenced in one of the prior questions, both bill H.B. 6388 and H.B. 6389 have language in them which would prevent any individual from either entering into a civil union or a marriage with a parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, sibling, parents' sibling, sibling's child, step-parent or step-child. That language is in the raised bill that individuals are testifying to today.

If there are -- the next individual to testify is Treasurer Denise Nappier.

STATE TREASURER DENISE NAPPIER: Good morning, Chairman McDonald and Chairman Lawlor and members of the committee.

I'm here to support H.B. 6388. It's AN ACT CONCERNING THE APPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN STATE STATUTES TO SAME SEX PARTNERS.

I do so as a person who has spent my life committed to ensuring equal rights and opportunities for all of our citizens whenever their gender, race, ethnic background create physical challenge or whatever their sexual orientation may be.

As a civil society, we should not impose artificial barriers or deny the extension of rights and yes, obligations that others in our society enjoy and bear on the basis of some label.

In my view, the Vermont Supreme Court said it best in a case declaring a constitutional right to equal treatment under the law for same sex couples. And I quote, "to acknowledge plaintiffs as Vermonters who seek nothing more, nothing less than legal protection and security for their vowed commitment to an intimate and lasting human relationship is simply, when all is said and done, a recognition of common humanity."

Our common humanity, what a powerful phrase. Generation after generation of Americans are called upon to rediscover and recommit ourselves to this very, very basic, very, very human principle. And I don't want to over-simplify the issues presented in this bill, but when reduced to its essence, this is what this bill is all about.

I urge your support.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

STATE TREASURER DENISE NAPPIER: I had a good answer for you.

SEN. KISSEL: Tell it to the next speaker.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker will be Judge Robert Killian.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Distinguished co-chairs and the distinguished members of the committee, for nineteen years I've served as Judge of Probate for the District of Hartford, Connecticut's largest probate district and also Connecticut's busiest probate court.

This very wonderful office has provided me with a perch from which I can observe my neighbors, often when they face some of life's greatest challenges.

I get the opportunity to see people struggling with addictions or the loss of loved ones. I see people whose families who are (inaudible) by economic stresses so severe, most of us could only imagine.

I see people dealing with the aftermath of tragic accidents and searching for normalcy in the face of horrible lingering deaths.

I work with families struggling to assist a mentally ill relative and others working to normalize the life of a loved one in the frightening decline of Alzheimer's.

I have to take kids away from families who engage in horrible abuses and then place them in kinship or adoptive homes, loving homes where people are ready to share their hearts with needy children.

In short, Mr. Chairman, I see the best and the worst in society and I've formulated some firmly held beliefs about life in Harford, Connecticut, USA in 2003.

First, I've learned that there are severe limitations in what society can do institutionally. Foster care is a poor substitute for adoption or kinship care. Group homes seldom match a nurturing family environment and a dying person is blessed to be able to spend the last days in the company of loved ones.

Second, I've learned that love and commitment is the magic ingredient that leads people to make super human efforts to serve others.

And finally, I've learned that there is no valid formula that says love and commitment can only be found in heterosexual couples.

I've worked with elderly same sex couples who have been together for decades, who support their loved one when dementia dims memory and steals away all but the very recollection that this caregiver is family and familiar and loved.

For years, gay individuals have adopted and cared well for children and the assistance of their significant other was often crucial and in your wisdom, only recently, you recognized this reality and did away with the artifice and allowed both individuals to join in adoption and you allowed love and commitment to prevail over prejudice and fear and I'm here to tell you it works.

And I've been borne witness to the loss suffered when one partner in a same sex relationship dies and the mourning, Mr. Chairman, is as intense as that felt by any heterosexual couple.

Perhaps in some ways, it's a tougher loss. Since many in society still evidence ambivalence toward the surviving gay companion, perhaps out of ignorance or confusion or indifference or just simple embarrassment. Whatever the reason, the lack of support in the community turns mourning inward and makes it all the harder.

I strongly support and without any reservation, the institution of marriage. My mother struggled to stay alive until shortly after she and my father shared their fiftieth wedding anniversary and made my role models as my wife and I passed together our quarter century mark.

When we honor this institution, we honor much more than the fact that people pay a license fee and make a quick trip to a justice of the peace. We're honoring love, commitment, sacrifice, care giving, compromise, fidelity, and like virtues, none of which bear any nexus to the sex of the partners.

Many of us believe we were not meant to live life alone and regardless of the sexual makeup, those who have found more biblical (inaudible), their mate who will share their life's journey are blessed as should be their union.

Only a cruel and callous society would deny its civil recognition and I hope you don't.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Please refrain from showing support.

Do any members of the committee have any questions? Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Judge.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.

REP. LAWLOR: As you know, I was a great admirer of your father. He was one of the great politicians in this state's history and I think you're certainly following in his tradition, especially with your words today.

But I do know from your previous testimony here that one time you were something of a skeptic about all of this.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: And I wondered if you could just enlighten us. What was it that changed your mind? Because I know a few years back you might not have been sitting here giving the same testimony.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Oh, I definitely wouldn't have been sitting here. I'm a middle-class, slightly the wrong side, a middle-aged Irishman. And I'm a product of my environment. And the concept of gay marriage was alien to me most of my life.

I suspect what changed my opinion was my life experience, largely since I became the Probate Judge in Hartford and I worked with people and I watched people and I observed people do wonderful things in the name of love and commitment, things that other people, heterosexual couples, shun and walk away from.

You know, we've lived through a tough time in Hartford. And I can't imagine facing life's terrible problems alone and I don't want it for me and I don't want it for anybody else and I have seen and learned and changed my attitude and hopefully grown to recognize that at least this wrong side of middle-aged Irish Catholic had better not ignore the worth in my fellow human beings.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Judge. Any other questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: I have to ask this question now. Again, for example in proposed H.B. 6388, there's a section three where it states that -- it's the usual proscription against -- here it is civil union, but again, a woman with her mother, her grandmother, her daughter, her granddaughter and again my question is this, these proposals are taking a set of constructs, the man and woman definition of marriage and taking that line away. And it seems to me somewhat amorphous when you say love makes a family because that doesn't really have a line. It's two individuals who come and say we love each other, boom, that's it, that's sufficient.

So my question to you would be, if we do away with things, why would we have this as part of our law if there's really no basis for it or can you see a basis for this other than biological?

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Sure I see a basis for it other than biological. The rules against marriage at certain degrees of consanguinity maybe routed in a world that looked only at the traditional man/woman marriage in a biological concern. Although I would point out to you that they pre-date by centuries any understanding of genetics or the possible infirmities of that type of a concern. In fact, accepted in the most basic of trial relationships, they may have very limited applicability to large groups of people, leading at least seven states of which I'm aware, to shorten the list of consanguinity, at least at it relates to cousins, down to a much narrower list of people.

It also, however, enforces a rule against confusion. I don't think that you want to be uncle/sister or grandpa/mommy or grandpa/grand-dad. And the fact of the matter is, what it's saying is that there is a structure in our world and in our lives. The structure currently consists also of a prohibition against same sex marriages, but it also wants to avoid tremendous confusion in the orderly role of people in each other's lives and those that they come in contact with.

Do I think there should be a prohibition against a daughter marrying her mother? Yes. I can think of no way that such a marriage is an extension of a right and as a matter of fact, it would, in some ways, be an elimination of a right and that's to be blessed with a mother.

And to try to convert a mother into a spouse would be folly.

So I think that it shows the wisdom of the drafters of the legislation that for social structure, they choose to continue what started, perhaps, as a rule against consanguinity, but has much more significance in our society and in our world.

SEN. KISSEL: Well, couldn't that exact same argument be made on behalf of those who support the defense of marriage act?

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: I don't see how. One says that we're going to apply a rule equally to everybody and one says that we're going to deny a whole class of people the rights to have society's affirmation of their relationship. I think to do that, would be to have a very backwards structure to the concept of denial.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Thank you, Senator.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Judge, this whole topic of rules that decide who can and can't get married is a fascinating one for me and it's over the last few years I learned a lot about it. I'd just be interested in your comment. This is a -- the Connecticut General Assembly actually this law a while back. I'd like to read it to you.

"No man or woman, either of whom is an epileptic, imbecile, or feebleminded shall inter-marry or live together as husband or wife when the woman is under 45 years of age. Any person violating or attempting to violate any of these provisions, shall be imprisoned for not less than three years."

So, this law apparently was passed in 1895 and I'm reading from a Connecticut Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of that law. It was repealed sometime after that when people decided that even imbeciles can get married and there are plenty of examples of that around, I suppose.

But the point is -- I think the point is these rules change with the times all the time and at the time I guess people -- apparently the definition of "Epileptic" at the time covered all sorts of mental illness and I guess law changes with the times. Has that been your experience?

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: In the best of all worlds, law keeps pace with reality and it usually follows reality somewhat, but if we're in the same decade, even if we're in the same century, I suppose we're doing better than we have in years past.

It was up until 1921 the punishment for attempted suicide in England was death by hanging. It doesn't give you a great sense of confidence in common sense.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Representative Hyslop, had you wanted to ask a question, Representative Hyslop?

REP. HYSLOP: No.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. Any other questions? Thank you very much, Your Honor.

JUDGE ROBERT KILLIAN: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Leslie Brett.

LESLIE BRETT: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, and members of the committee.

My name is Leslie Brett and I'm Executive Director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and I thank you for this opportunity to testify today in support of extending equal rights and responsibilities to same gender partners through civil marriage.

We urge you to reject H.B. 5356 because it would move Connecticut backward in the pursuit of respect and equality for all the residents of our State.

The right to marry is a fundamental civil rights issue and I applaud you for addressing it this year.

I am going to focus my remarks on the institution of civil marriage itself. The rules governing civil marriage is distinct from those governing religious marriage and are determined primarily by state legislatures for the purpose of creating orderly arrangements for the assignment of property, care and custody of children, mutual responsibility and support.

They have changed constantly over the past 250 years and will continue to change. You've already heard some testimony about that.

Moreover, they've changed in the direction of greater inclusion, equality, and individual consent and freedom. When people argue that the form of marriage we have today has always been with us and can never be changed, they are incorrect. In fact, a lot has been said on both sides of this argument about the history and tradition of marriage.

Throughout human history, the predominant form of marriage was arranged marriage between two people who often did not know each other and whose marriage was accompanied by an exchange of property.

If history and tradition alone were the determinants of our laws today, then most women would still be given to a stranger with a plot of land and a healthy cow.

In fact, the change about which you're hearing testimony today that would allow same gender partners to legally marry follows the American tradition of strengthening marriage as an institution based on consent and individual choice and, in fact, it is a conservative change in that it brings more people under the rule of law.

Let me give you a few examples of these changes. Under the laws of the State of Connecticut, women had almost no rights within marriage until the 1860's. As you may know, the family law principles that Congress adopted from Europe were based on a system called "coverture" under which women literally lost their legal identity upon marriage and they became a "femme covert", or covered women. They were not allowed to own property, sign contracts, bring lawsuits or serve on juries. Even land or other property they may have owned from their families of origin automatically became the property of their husbands. In other words, women were explicitly and unabashedly defined as second-class citizens under the law. The rule was summarized by William Blackstone in his famous treatise in the 1760's. He said, "By marriage, the husband and the wife are one person in law, that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband."

While these sentiments may seem outdated now, it is important to know that each state legislator had to address this fundamental issue of inequality through passage of hotly debated Married Women's Property Acts.

Your predecessors in this building, in this Legislature, passed such a bill in Connecticut in the 1860's that seemed at the time to change the nature of marriage to a degree at least equal or surpassing the degree of change that you are considering today.

Now, marriage laws have also changed dramatically with respect to issues of race and Comptroller Wyman already talked about that and I won't repeat her testimony. Our laws have also changed dramatically with respect to divorce only thirty years ago when we passed the No Fault Divorce statutes.

If I could just take one more minute to speak personally. This is the third time I have addressed this committee on this issue and as many of you know, the topic is personally important to me because I've been in a lesbian relationship with my partner, Carolyn Gabel for 23 years. We've lived through a lot of life together. We've raised children, rejoiced at the birth of grandchildren, faced illness, and lost loved ones.

Last year, at exactly this time, just as the hearing on this matter was taking place, I was fighting breast cancer and it was a very frightening time. I walked through every step of my illness with Carolyn at my side, just as anyone in this room would have done with a loving partner and I cannot imagine what it would have been like without her.

Our relationship is a source of joy, comfort, and love. I maybe one of the most fortunate people in this room and yet our relationship is invisible to the law. There are people in this state who have been married for one day who have more rights and recognition under the law than Carolyn and I do after 23 years.

The first time I addressed the General Assembly as an openly lesbian person was in 1991 as we were fighting for the gay rights bill.

SEN. MCDONALD: Leslie, could you wrap it up, please?

LESLIE BRETT: Yes. And a lot has changed since then. We've gained a deeper understanding of what equality means and the prohibition against our right to marry and to have our families recognized under civil law is nothing less than assigning us to inferior marginal status in our society.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

LESLIE BRETT: I'll stop there. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: I just wanted to ask you one question. You mentioned this coverture or femme covert thing and it just triggers in my mind. You said it's -- did you say it's an old fashioned thing or what was your quote? I forget.

LESLIE BRETT: I said I hope that people thought it was outdated.

REP. LAWLOR: Because aren't we fighting a war against these Taliban guys, this Berka thing? I don't think it's outdated everywhere.

LESLIE BRETT: No, that's certainly true. I was referring to the society and the laws we have here which protect quite a bit of liberties for both men and women and there are places in the world where women are still struggling that very fight.

REP. LAWLOR: And where that exists, it's a religious thing, isn't it, the Berka thing, it's a religious mandate? I think it's Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan or under the Taliban.

LESLIE BRETT: Under the Taliban and what happens, of course, is that in some cases the religious law becomes the civil law, depending on whose in charge and that was part of the struggle with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Other questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Hi, Ms. Brett. Good to see you again.

LESLIE BRETT: Senator, nice to see you.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you. Again, with Section 3, I'm trying to bring it to focus exactly what the proponents are saying. And is it the position that because there's a vocal -- I wouldn't say majority, but minority of individuals that want this, that's sort of the reality of Connecticut today, that this, the traditional concept of marriage between a man and a woman is a tradition that has worn out its usefulness, but that there are other traditions such as mothers and daughters and first cousins and stuff, the proscription on those inter-familial relationships, that proponents would say we don't want to remove those because that would cause people to be confused and there's legitimate reasons for those proscriptions, but the heretofore traditional proscription of marriage being only between a man and woman, we feel that that should be set aside? Is that a fair recapitulation?

LESLIE BRETT: I think the answer to the question that you've been raising, in my opinion, is that each of the changes I talked about and the one you're considering this year is a piece-by-piece examination of one section of the law and the Legislature just does as it does on anything that comes before it, considers the public policy reasons for that particular issue or changing that part of the law.

Changing one part of the law doesn't mean you have to change the whole law. If somebody created a movement and brought reasons to you for changing the law against first cousin marriage, I'm sure you'd consider it. That's not the movement or the issue that's before you today.

But I don't think changing one part of the law means you have to throw out the whole law. You just have to decide which ones make sense today for public policy reasons.

SEN. KISSEL: And again, I state this because I am concerned about a slippery slope and when we change one policy, it inevitably leads to discussions and movement in a certain direction. And I think that we've seen that over the last decade. We saw adoption by same sex couples if they were given approval by the Probate Court and we were told well this isn't going to lead to discussions on same sex marriages and low and behold, here we are today.

And so I guess my other question is this. Are you seeking to support or are you speaking to support same sex marriage or would you be satisfied, I guess - I don't want to sound demeaning because I certainly don't intend that, but is it your position that if Connecticut adopted a civil union statute, that that would be sufficient or would we be here once again a year from now with a civil union law on the books and people still clamoring saying no, we want marriage, civil union is just part of the way?

LESLIE BRETT: Okay, I'm going to answer that in two parts. The PCSW has taken the position of supporting the equal legal rights and responsibilities for same gender couples. I believe, to give an honest to your question, that nothing is equal to marriage but marriage and that we're beginning to see some of the consequences of civil unions joined in Vermont and people not having the recognition and rights in other states because a unique legal institution in one state does not confer the same level of equality and recognition in other states.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much. I really appreciate your candor.

LESLIE BRETT: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Representative Cafero was next and then Representative Rowe.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Ms. Brett. How are you?

LESLIE BRETT: Good afternoon. Fine, thank you.

REP. CAFERO: (inaudible-tape switched sides-some dialogue not recorded) it's also my understanding in the State of California there is a domestic partnership registration law. Is that your understanding?

LESLIE BRETT: Yes.

REP. CAFERO: Could you just briefly, and I apologize if you've already done this, differentiate those three levels, if you will. Domestic partnership registration versus civil union versus marriage and why, in your mind, I guess based on what you just answered, marriage is the best solution in your mind. If you could just do that and I have a follow-up.

LESLIE BRETT: I will do my best and then I will say that there are several other attorneys following me who can probably follow-up my answer.

Marriage is the simplest. It's the shortest bill. And it simply would take the definitions of marriage and allow same gender couples to participate without any differentiation and that's the clearest and not very complicated idea.

Civil union, as you know, came about in Vermont when the Vermont Supreme Court said to the Legislature you must find something that is equivalent or equal to marriage and they created a law, which they believed, at least in Vermont, gave every single right, responsibility, and legal status to the civil union that was also in their laws regarding marriage and I think in Vermont, to the extent possible, that's the case.

The domestic partner registration in California gave some legal recognition to the fact that two people affirm that they are in some relationship called "domestic partnership" and then certain rights and legal actions can flow from that, but not the entire panoply in our case of over 500 rights and responsibilities under the law, just the ones identified by the Legislature.

REP. CAFERO: And again, I realize this might not be your forte with regard to the actual knowledge of the law, but in California, what -- I know last year, for instance, we took certain statutes and made them marriage neutral, for lack of a better term. What was the purpose in California behind the actual act of registration?

LESLIE BRETT: I think it's an important statement that there is an actual relationship between two people that are recognized by the State and then the State confers or permits certain kinds of legal rights and responsibilities with that.

What we did in Connecticut last year was to give some extra umph to a contract that might be entered into or paperwork that's entered into between two people, but not necessarily between those people and the State.

REP. CAFERO: Is it -- let's assume we were to pass the law recognizing marriage between same sex couples. And again, maybe you're not the person to ask this question. Is it possible for other states -- well, let me back up. Would that give same sex couples rights in other states beyond what they would have if we were to have, say, a civil union form of law similar to that of Vermont?

LESLIE BRETT: I guess that's one of the $64,000 questions that remains to be seen in the future of this matter. We presume that a marriage is a marriage and the marriage is recognized. If you enter into here, it's recognized in all the other fifty states.

That is not, of course, necessarily the case with the civil unions that are entered into Vermont, although that's a matter now of legal action and I think I will defer some of these questions to the lawyers who are coming after me.

REP. CAFERO: The reason I asked the question is I know last year when we were talking about certain statutes, what we found is that if a couple, any couple, heterosexual, homosexual, etcetera, who are not married, have an agreement, a contract, if you will, wherein certain benefits are bestowed on that person or rights such as visitation in nursing homes, etcetera, that there were some states, a power of attorney, for instance, that did not recognize those contractual rights when presented to them.

There was testimony given last year where a gay couple had been traveling. I believe they were on vacation. One of the partners took ill. The other partner was there to assist him in the whole medical process at the hospital and certainly wished to be with him during or just prior to the procedure and was asked to leave. He presented the contract giving him that right and the response was -- I don't know if it was litigated, but "we don't recognize that right."

I guess my question is, and again, you might not be the proper one to ask this, I mean, if Connecticut or any state were to pass a law recognizing gay marriage, does that preclude an other state from saying in our state we recognize marriage from anywhere around the world only if that is a marriage between a man and a woman and therefore, deny the rights of that married couple under the laws of one state and the laws of another?

LESLIE BRETT: I'll answer it as far as I'm qualified to answer it and then, as you say, maybe you'll hear some other testimony from others that come after me.

I think a properly executed contract should be honored, whether you enter into it here and then take it to some other state. And there maybe instances where people simply improperly didn't recognize contracts or were invoking a law that they considered superior or preemptive about the relationship of, say, a family member or a next of kin or something that they were recognizing ahead of the lesbian or gay partner who had the paperwork.

And that's, in fact, why I think we want to standardize these laws and say, in fact, when I'm in a relationship for 23 years and have entered into it as fully as I can, that I'm the next of kin so that there's no question if I'm in Connecticut or if I'm in Tennessee or if I'm in California.

Will that take effect if I legally marry here in Connecticut? I believe so and I hope so. But I can't answer the question anymore fully than that.

REP. CAFERO: And my last question would be, obviously it is your goal or hope that this legislature pass and the law of the land becomes legalization, if you will, of same sex marriage. Does that mean that you are -- I guess opposed is probably a bad word, but with regard to domestic partner relationship or civil union, you would see that as one not desirable and at best, only a temporary measure until you personally see the state you live in achieve your ultimate goal of same sex marriage?

LESLIE BRETT: I wouldn't say it's not desirable. I think it would be a huge step forward and an acknowledgment of lots of rights and responsibilities if we had a full fledged civil union, but I have to reiterate my honest answer before, which I don't think anything is full equal to marriage except marriage.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative Rowe.

REP. ROWE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hi, Ms. Brett. Welcome back for the third time, I guess.

LESLIE BRETT: Good afternoon.

REP. ROWE: Good afternoon. You're certainly correct that marriage has undergone a variety or a host of piece-meal changes throughout the years.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative, I think your microphone is off.

REP. ROWE: Can you hear me?

SEN. MCDONALD: There you go.

LESLIE BRETT: Can you hear me now?

REP. ROWE: Okay. I'll do away with the salutations I started with because I think you heard me, but my initial point is I think you're absolutely right that marriage has undergone piece-meal changes throughout the generations. I think, however, most on both sides of this issue would agree that opening up marriage to same gender couples is more than a piece-meal change. It's a (inaudible) change. It's a very significant change.

Now, if we do this, if we do open up marriage to same gender couples, what basis do we have ten years now when polygamists come or groups that want three or four people to be allowed the right to marry or adults and minors or other non-traditional folks? As long as the traditional inhibitions are just those and we want to do away with them, and as long as we're told love makes a family, aren't we now bound to open marriage to any class of individuals that come before us and ask that we allow them to marry and confer upon them all the rights and obligations and such that go along with that?

LESLIE BRETT: I think I would answer similarly to the way I answered Senator Kissel a little bit ago, which is that each change that comes before you to consider, people make and you make, the public policy arguments and consider them. Whose hurt, whose harmed, what public policy interest is served by having the law this way or by changing it.

So, the one that we are deliberating this year and have in the past couple of years, is this one about same gender couples. If people come before you with other requests and ideas in the future, you will consider them and you may reject them. It doesn't open the dam to anything and everything. You have the same right every single time to consider the public policy arguments and make a decision.

REP. ROWE: Well, I guess I disagree that it doesn't open up the dam because I see this as a really significant step which -- and we really, -- the State would have a very weak basis to deny marriage to other individuals, untraditional individuals who come before us and say that love is the basis for their relationship. Therefore, they need to be married or they need to be extended that right.

So I do think that the dam is being breached a bit here and it will be very difficult to look the next group in the eye and deny them the right to marriage after we have done just that.

LESLIE BRETT: Well, love makes a family. I'm smiling a little bit because it's been raised a couple of times. It's a slogan. But the bills say quite a bit more than that and the bills do describe some of the rules, the prohibitions, the steps and so on which, as you know, mirror the rules and so on that we have now for marriage between a man and a woman.

So, it's not throwing the whole system up in the air. It's really -- I can't disagree with you that it's not a significant change to allow same gender partners to marry, but it might not be as cataclysmic a change as you're imagining because it's conservative in some ways. It's people saying we're living our lives in Connecticut now. We want to be covered and characterized under the same laws that everybody else is covered and characterized under. We don't want to change them in a dramatic way, we want to be part of them.

REP. ROWE: Never heard same sex marriage been called a conservative life, but thank you for your candor.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker was scheduled to be Senator Prague. She had a one o'clock meeting that she had to attend and she hopes to be able to rejoin us at a later point in the hearing.

The next speaker then is Representative Adinolfi.

REP. ADINOLFI: Good morning, Chairman McDonald.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good morning. Good afternoon.

REP. ADINOLFI: Senator Kissel, Representative Farr, and the Judiciary Committee.

For the record, I'm Al Adinolfi, the State Representative of the 137^th district. That's Cheshire, Wallingford, and Hamden. And I appear before you today to support the proposed bill, H.B. 5356, AN ACT CONCERNING MARRIAGE.

This legislation would amend Chapter 815a of the General Statutes to provide that valid marriage shall be recognized by the State of Connecticut as a union between one man and one woman. It limits the rights and privilege to marriages which are so defined. And this allows the recognition of other relationships where they are not a union of one man and one woman from being granted such recognition or being afforded such rights and benefits.

Passage of this bill by the General Assembly will reaffirm the State's commitment to recognize marriage as a longstanding institution that dates back to the dawning of civilization.

The social, anthropologic and historical need for an exclusive bond between a man and a woman and the gender distinctions reflected in the institution are not an artificial construct of society. They are intrinsic in the basic foundation of our society, the family.

There are a number of people here today who will suggest to you that the time has come to recognize alternative families, but I can tell you that when it comes to the family, there is no alternative. There could be no adequate replacement for children being raised under the necessary balance of having a mother and a father. While marriage may have religious origins and foundations, the institution has long been recognized for its societal benefit.

Such was the case when the United States Supreme Court, in 1885, stated that states seeking admission to the Union were required to recognize marriages, heterosexuality, exclusiveness, and permanence.

Proponents of same sex marriage assert that marriage's meaning should be expanded to incorporate recognition of same gender relationships, but marriage is not an American invention. It is not something that we, as residents of Connecticut, can whimsically redefine radically in its meaning. Same gender marriage proponents also make the claim that restricting marriage to one man and one woman is imposing on our personal beliefs on homosexuals. However, the reality is that by attempting to redefine a centuries old tradition that does not know the boundary of time or nation, it is these advocates who are imposing their benefits on society.

By affirming that marriage is a sacred bond between one man and one woman, we are not discriminating against homosexuals. Homosexual men and women currently enjoy all the rights of every citizen in this country enjoys. Yet by attempting to alter the requirements for the institution of marriage, these activists are seeking to deliver a set of special rights. They may profess to have and possess love for one another, and I believe they do, but they simply do not meet the criteria for the institution of marriage.

I don't want to go into the definitions in the dictionary of marriage, but I will say this and I will conclude.

Is that I've been married for 47 years to the same woman. I have two children, six grandchildren and I don't tell anybody this because you'll catch onto my age, but I have one great grandchild. And I say going through, as you get older, you have to prepare for the things that are going to happen in the past and I didn't receive any special rights because I'm married. I still had to create a will. I still had to go through attorneys and pay them to make my wife my POA. I still had to appoint her my health care agent and pay for it. It wasn't automatic. And I still, if I ever need a conservator or my mind goes, I had to appoint my wife as my conservator in the future.

But why am I any different than anyone else in this room? They would have to do the same thing that I, as a married person, to a female, would have to do.

So I don't understand what benefits we would get from a civil union of what benefits we would have by same sex marriage. It's only destroying what we know and we have cherished all our lives. I didn't want to go and I won't go into the religious aspects of it because that's not why I'm here.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Do any members have questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Hi. Thank you for coming in. Just a couple of points.

A previous speaker had said that marriage between a man and a woman is an ancient prejudice. How would you respond to that, that that construct is essentially just a prejudicial construct?

REP. ADINOLFI: I'd call it a right and a privilege.

SEN. KISSEL: And the other question is, you stated that individuals of the same sex have exactly the same rights as everyone else.

REP. ADINOLFI: Well, --

SEN. KISSEL: Hold on, my friend. And the argument is made by proponents of the other bills that they don't have the right. They want to go and be recognized as married in a civil system of Connecticut and they don't have that right that a man and a woman have. And I'm just wondering what your response to that argument is.

REP. ADINOLFI: Well, my opinion on that is that I don't see what they would be gaining by condoning the marriage of the same sex other than destroying what has traditionally been known as marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Representative Adinolfi.

REP. ADINOLFI: Good afternoon.

REP. LAWLOR: You said you're married, right?

REP. ADINOLFI: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: If we passed the civil union law or the same sex marriage law, how would this change effect your marriage?

REP. ADINOLFI: It would effect me. It would -- my wife and I would feel that the relationship we've had for the past 47 years has just been torn apart. We've struggled to keep together for 45 years -- 47 years, I'm sorry. There's not many people, probably in this room that could say that.

But I think by taking it, you're demeaning the real meaning of marriage of a union of a man and a woman and I would feel very hurt as a married person and who has gone through the tribulations of life as a parent and there are those who aren't parents and have adopted children and that's fine too. But I've experienced in my own family, both sides of the aisle and I will say that some in my family who are on the other side of the aisle, (inaudible) and I was very close to them, professed that they wanted to get married. They just wanted to leave their lifestyle. They left alone. Take advantage of whatever is available within the law.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Are there other questions by members of the committee?

I have just one - two quick questions, Representative. I think you testified that you didn't recognize any kind of alternative family lifestyle outside of a man and a woman and their children. Is that correct?

REP. ADINOLFI: What was the children part?

SEN. MCDONALD: I believe you had testified that you thought that the only family construct which you thought society should support is the existence of a man and a woman raising children.

REP. ADINOLFI: Not everyone has children. So I --

SEN. MCDONALD: No, I understand. But if children are involved --

REP. ADINOLFI: But I think we did pass some legislation that did allow some same sex and option.

SEN. MCDONALD: But do you at least acknowledge that there are many other types of family units that do not have two parents in a family or any parents in a family?

REP. ADINOLFI: Oh, sure. I know many single parents.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay.

REP. ADINOLFI: My granddaughter is a single parent.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. So you acknowledge that that is still a family unit, structure even if there is not a spouse involved in that relationship?

REP. ADINOLFI: That's correct.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. And I have, in my district, two individuals who happen to be of the same gender who have been in a relationship for 45 years. Is it your position that that relationship over the span of 45 years, maybe not quite as many as your 47 with your wife, but that that relationship is not deserving of recognition and support from the community in which they live?

REP. ADINOLFI: I think recognition of law is what's within the heart and if they feel that way about each other and they have my respect. I have nothing against them if that's their choice. The only thing is that I feel that the marriage should be between a man and a woman. I respect their wishes. I respect their love for each other. And God bless them. They're probably -- their tribulations are just like any other married person has over the years.

But to take the traditional marriage and change that, I believe is wrong.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: I just want to say thank you for coming to testify and you look way too young to be a great grandfather.

REP. ADINOLFI: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Representative. That, amazingly, comes to the conclusion of the public officials who had signed up.

And we hit our one hour mark just perfectly. So let's hope the rest of the day goes as well.

I am going to, as I call the speakers from the public portion of the hearing, I will read off three speakers at a time just so that you know who is going to be the next ones up, especially for the benefit of individuals who are in the overflow rooms so that they have enough time to get up here and be prepared to testify.

The first one speaker then -- and as I said, we will be alternating between the two lists that we have and I believe there are still sign-up lists over there.

The first speaker then will be Robert Muckle, Sr. Mr. Muckle. There you go.

And the next speaker will -- after Mr. Muckle will be Detective Francis Coppolla and then Vincent McCarthy.

ROBERT E. MUCKLE, SR.: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good afternoon.

ROBERT E. MUCKLE, SR.: My name is Robert E. Muckle, Sr. I ask that you support H.B. 5356, the Defense of Marriage Act.

My background is natural family planning. With my testimony on paragraph 1601 through 1607 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church under the title, "The Sacrament of Marriage". Paragraph 1601 states, "matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman established between themselves a partnership of the whole of life is, by its nature, only toward the good of the spouses, the procreation and education of offspring. This covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ, the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."

In paragraph 1602 it reads, "Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman and the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of the wedding feast of the Lamb." Paragraph 1603 says, "God himself is the author of marriage."

When a man and a woman take their marriage vows, they make a covenant before God that the two of them will become one flesh. Every time they have a marital relationship, they renew that covenant that they made before God on their wedding day.

I once heard the comment that because of the love of God, the Father and God, the Son, we have God, the Holy Spirit. Because of the nuptial love of a husband and wife, there's a good chance that within nine months there will be a third person.

By being open to life, their relationship is a gift of one to the other.

I urge that you reject the same sex marriage and legal civil unions. Paragraph 2357 of the Catechism says -- and you have that, that's enclosed. "Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity. Tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."

There are many groups in the U.S. that do a great job in assisting people who have the same sex attraction. The one that I am familiar with is COURAGE, a Catholic group founded by Father John Harvey and I understand they have a chapter in New Haven. They have regular meetings and those who have this same sex attraction can talk to one another, work out their problems, and hopefully live chaste lives. We are all called to live chaste lives. That is, no sex before marriage and no contraception after marriage.

Another group, it's called NARTH, N-A-R-T-H, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, www.narth.com, which was founded by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist. The Mormons have a group called Evergreen. They have an 800-number that people can call. And also, there's this Harvest, U.S.A., that's www.harvestusa.org.

This past December, about 20 of you -- I sent audio tapes one by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi called the "Gay Lie" and the other one was by David Morrison.

SEN. MCDONALD: Could you wrap up your testimony, please?

ROBERT MUCKLE, SR.: Yes, I am right now. He's a gay activist, a former gay activist.

And I just hope that you're able to listen to these and if you haven't, that you will, because there's all good information in there.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions for Mr. Muckle? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It seems like your argument is in opposition to same sex civil unions or same sex marriage are predicated on religion and a moral position.

ROBERT MUCKLE, SR.: Right.

SEN. KISSEL: Is there any argument that you would make as far as extending the right to marriage to individuals of the same sex based upon facts other than religion? In other words, perhaps the slippery slope, the path that we're going, the creation of an ideal. It seems -- I have to say as somebody who has concerns about extending the right of marriage or marriage to individuals of the same sex, your testimony seems very damming and that's a concern to me because I don't think we, as a Legislature, should be in the business of condemning individuals if what they're doing is not against the law. No one's talking about that.

ROBERT MUCKLE, SR.: No way do I mean condemn anybody, okay. The thing is our main concern should be the family and in society today, the family is under attack and a healthy family is a husband, a wife, and their children. Okay? That's man and woman and children. Anything out of that, besides that, are going to have problems and I think same sex marriage is not going to help the situation. It's going to make -- that's one thing that's going to continue worse among other things.

Once you make one compromise, sir, you lose everything. Okay. So we've got to remember, there have to be standards, you have to go by the standards. Once you just bend a little bit, you lose everything and that's what we're doing here.

SEN. KISSEL: Fortunately or unfortunately, this building is filled with compromises. That's how our laws get made.

ROBERT MUCKLE, SR.: But some things you can't compromise.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Senator Kissel. Other questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker will be Detective Francis Coppolla followed by Vincent McCarthy and then Rabbi Elissa Cohen.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Good afternoon, Senator, Representatives of the committee.

My name is Francis Coppolla and as some of you may already know, I'm a policeman with the New York City Police Department. I hold the rank of Detective. I've been a police officer for sixteen years and my story is like many others.

I had a partner, a life partner who was a firefighter who was killed on September 11^th. And I can guarantee you that if he was here today, we would want to be here together. I can also guarantee you that we're not asking for special rights. We're asking for equality, equal rights, the same rights as anybody else.

I searched for my partners for 247 days. I looked and I searched and I came up with body, body parts, and I cannot find him. I went to the morgue afterwards every single day looking for him and I still couldn't find him. A couple of months ago I received a phone call telling me that his body had been recovered and he had already been buried. I called his family, they wouldn't give me any information because they too don't believe in gays being together.

I had to go searching cemetery to cemetery, everywhere because legally I don't have any rights. I found out later his body had not been recovered. His body was never recovered.

Had I been married, had I been given the opportunity to marry the one man that I've only learned to love, the only man that I intended to spend the rest of my life with and I was given that opportunity, I wouldn't have to go searching for him.

We're not asking for anything special. We're really not. We are like everyone else here. We pay taxes. We go to work. And we pay our bills.

On that day when we ran into those towers we weren't thinking of let's just save the gay people. We were saving everybody. People were running out, we were running in. We stayed there. I was in that north tower when the south tower came down. I didn't run out. And when I came out of that north tower, because I was assisting someone else, and tried to go back in and they wouldn't allow me.

It wasn't until I got out of that north tower that I knew that the south tower had come down.

It's not about sex. It's about what's fair. It's about love. My love for my partner was no different than the love for a wife. I know, I've been married twice.

We're not asking for anything special. If my partner had survived and I had died, I would have liked to know that he would have been taken care of, that he didn't have to go searching for me like crazy, 247 days, 18 to 20 hours a day, I searched for him and well documented, mostly on my own time.

We're not here for anything special.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Detective. Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: First of all, thank you for coming today, Detective. I know this can't be a very fun experience under the circumstances, but you know, we've all read in the papers the stories of that day and as I understand it, there was a number of gay and lesbian police officers and firefighters that lost their lives that day and I believe some of them were couples and I don't know if you had any more information about that particular aspect of the day.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: On that day I lost 19 friends. Six of those friends were coupled with each other. They didn't go in there, like I said, just to save the gay people. They died together.

I happy to think they're the lucky ones, actually because they don't have to deal with this, you know.

There were a lot of gay people that died that day. Fourteen firefighters that I personally knew were gay and again, they did their job with pride. They loved what they did. We all love what we do. They are our heroes. They are the real heroes. The rest of us, we're just doing our jobs. But we do it proudly and every day when we go in there to do our job, wherever we do it, whether it's Harlem, whether it's in East New York or whether it's here in Connecticut, or Alabama. I can guarantee you, when a police officer goes to does his job or a firefighter, they do it because they want to. They don't do it because they have to.

REP. LAWLOR: And I know that in New York City, I think there's a lot of protections, in general, for gays and lesbians, city employees, etcetera, but in the aftermath of the death of Eddy and in these other cases where same sex partnerships were broken up, in effect, by the death of one of the partners, were you able to pursue any type of state compensation that you would get if -- I understand there's some sort of state system that provides some sort of compensation if, in effect, you lose a spouse or a partner, that type of thing.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: In the City of New York, they gave us this thing called "Domestic Partnership". Domestic Partnership guarantees us one thing, pay more taxes so that we can get insurance for our person that we love, our partner. Eddy was a city employee. He didn't need my help for insurance. I didn't need his. We weren't registered. So many other people weren't registered.

We couldn't get anything. I just want my Eddy back. I can't have him back. See, I want the person that I expected to spend the rest of my life with, that's all I want. It's not going to happen.

I don't know why God, because He's the one who has me here today, I don't know why God let me live and took Eddy and so many other good people because there were a lot of good men and women that He allowed me to live. I'm here.

And every time I turn around that I look for a reason, it comes back to this and it's funny because I'm not the type of man that wants to go around shoving my lifestyle down anybody's throat. But here I am today.

REP. LAWLOR: Were you both working that morning, both you and Eddy on duty that day, September 11^th?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Yes. We met for breakfast and I was assigned to the courthouse. I was supposed to get search warrants and testify in court. And we met in Brooklyn. We had breakfast. Eddy wanted to go surfing and I kept telling him no, come on, meet me for breakfast. We met for breakfast. We had our breakfast and later on I was supposed to meet a friend in the north tower, ironically, where she worked and we were supposed to have coffee because she wanted to talk. Hers was the first body I recovered.

That morning, it was coincidence. I'm not sure, maybe it was God. We both, Eddy and I met in the north tower. I wasn't assigned to the north tower. After the south tower I got hit, I ran there. I wasn't supposed to be there. I work in Harlem, I work downtown. I was supposed to be in the courthouse, but as a police officer, as a rescue worker, as a fireman, we do what we're supposed to do. It's in us and we ran there.

In the lobby of the north tower, in the second floor lobby, I heard his mouth and I just looked to the side and after having a few words, we exchanged. A heavy-set woman grabbed onto my arm and she begged me to please walk her outside and that is the only reason I walked outside.

As I walked her outside, she hits me with her elbow and she says to me, "Could you answer him already?" And I look and he's yelling at me, "I love you." Eddy was closeted, not because he was embarrassed of who he was, not because of me, it was because that's what society expected him to do. That's the place where his job, that's what they expect you to do, hide.

I'm so used to telling him that I love you by doing the sign of I Love You and I just automatically did that. And his reply was, "You chicken."

I walked out of there and I had a big smile on my face and all I kept saying was, "Oh my God, I can't believe he just did that, now everybody's going to know." I guess maybe deep down inside he knew what was going on. And I was just in denial.

When I got outside, I remember turning my head and seeing that the south tower was gone and I remember bodies flying. I remember watching people jump out of windows and all I kept saying was, "Oh my God, that's a mortal sin" and saying a prayer and saying, "God, please, they don't know what they're doing." This is all happening so fast and now I'm trying to run back in and I'm stopped, not once, but twice from two different angles.

And all I kept thinking was we've got to do something, we've got to get these people out of there. We've got to get Eddy out of there. And it didn't happen.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I extend to you my greatest personal sympathies on the loss of your significant other and I think that all of us in this room extend our sympathies to the families and friends of everybody who lost loved ones on September 11^th.

You had stated that the City of New York does have the potentiality of the domestic partnership. If you were registered with this other individual and do you mind if I say significant other?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Life partner would be best.

SEN. KISSEL: Life partner. If you and your life partner were registered as domestic partners and this turn of events occurred, would you have had any additional rights in trying to get information regarding whether he was alive or dead or the disposition of his remains?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: No.

SEN. KISSEL: And that's --

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Like I said, that little piece of paper, do you know what it gives us? The right to pay more taxes.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. Do you know if that law in New York is the same as the Domestic Partnership laws in the State of California?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: I don't, no.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. And my other question to you is the same one I posed to Ms. Brett earlier. We have seen gradual proposals over the last decade or so, marching towards what we're here today. Do you have a position regarding civil unions versus marriage and, in your opinion, would civil union suffice or really is ultimately what you're seeking is marriage between same sex life partners and that really would be where it should be in your opinion, that anything short of that would be a compromise and a mere stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of a marriage?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: When I pay my taxes, I have to pay them like everybody else. I think I deserve, I've earned the right of equality. I've earned that right of having the same rights as everybody else.

SEN. KISSEL: So if we passed a civil union bill, you would be supportive of a third proposal to make it a marriage because anything short of a marriage is not equal rights?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Exactly.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay, thank you, sir.

SEN. MCDONALD: Other questions? Detective, first of all, I want to thank you for coming and sharing your personal story and tragedy with all of the members of the committee. Your courage that you showed in September 11^th didn't end there.

And so forgive me for asking a personal question, but did your life partner have a will?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: No, he did not.

SEN. MCDONALD: So under -- to use the legal jargon, under the laws of intestacy, you're not entitled to any aspect of his personal assets or property?

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Nothing. I had taken out a second mortgage on my house so that I could help him with his bills, $80,000. You would think that the least I could have gotten was that. Now I've got two mortgages to pay and I pay them gladly because do you know what? I made his life a little easier for a little bit and that's what it's all about, it's sharing your love with someone.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

REP. LAWLOR: One last thing before you go. I know you're obviously from New York City, as we can tell by your accent, not that there's anything wrong with that, but you did mention a while back and I just thought it would be interesting for the folks here to hear, what your plans are after you retire from the New York Police Department.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: In four years I actually intend to retire from the Police Department and then join the Connecticut State Fire Department.

REP. LAWLOR: So you'll be a voting Connecticut resident then and we're looking forward to that.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Yes.

SEN. MCDONALD: So you can pay your taxes here.

DETECTIVE FRANCIS COPPOLLA: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: They're much lower than New York, I can tell you that right now.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. The next speaker is Vincent McCarthy, followed by Rabbi Elissa Cohen and then followed by Dr. Finn.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor and committee members.

My name is Vincent McCarthy and I am presently Director of the Marriage Law Project and the Center for Marriage Law, both of which are institutions set up to strengthen marriage throughout the country. We're involved in cases in New Jersey, Lewis v. Harris; a case in Massachusetts, the Goodrich case. We brought a suit in Boston against their domestic partners law which was struck down.

I am opposed to same sex marriage and to civil unions and in favor of DOMA.

Until recently, people in the United States and western culture, generally, could pretty much take for granted, when they talked about marriage, they were talking about a relationship, a committed sexual union between a man and a woman.

State marriage laws uniformly have embodied that understanding, but our culture has viewed marriage between a man and a woman as uniquely valuable in form of human relationship.

Those laws gave special protection and benefits to and in code, special legal responsibilities on couples entering the relationship.

In the last two or three decades, this understanding has come under increasing challenge. As agitation began to change state marriage laws to recognize same sex relationships as marriages, that movement has made little headway in state legislatures and as legislative rejection of same sex marriage is unanimous in the United States.

Therefore, same sex marriage proponents have turned to the courts to achieve what they've been unable so far to achieve by convincing people's representatives and ultimately the people themselves of the justness of their cause. In fact, when this issue has gone to the people in Hawaii and Alaska, the people voted against same sex marriage.

Benefits for same sex relationships, domestic partnerships, civil unions are a Trojan Horse for same sex marriages. There is no uniqueness to same sex partnership that deserves the same benefits presently reserved to marital partners. Once the uniqueness of marriage is destroyed, relationships of three, four, and five partners will be able to argue that they are entitled to the same protections as same sex unions and there will be no principled reason why they are not entitled to these benefits.

Marriage serves as the unitive and procreative purposes which our culture has consistently granted. A qualitative difference exists between the committed sexual union of a man and woman that our culture commonly has called marriage and any other relationship between two or more people, including same sex relationships. That difference is based upon the complimentary of sexual functioning between a man and a woman which goes to the heart of the main purpose for recognizing and encouraging marriage which is a unitive commitment.

Briefly put, the committed sexual relationship of a man and a woman creates a union that is not possible in any other relationship because sexual intercourse between spouses literally unite people in the way that no other act can and thus allows them to actualize and experience their marriage as a two-in-one flesh union. Only heterosexual couples are capable of this union. Same sex couples simply cannot perform this one act that can make two people one.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Representative Stone.

REP. STONE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What's the name of the organization that you're speaking on behalf of?

VINCENT McCARTHY: The Center for Marriage Law and the Marriage Law Project.

REP. STONE: And one of the things that you indicated in your testimony was that one of the charges of this group is to strengthen the institution of marriage.

My question is, other than proposing DOMA legislation and other than fighting against same sex marriage legislation, what other types of things does this institution engage in, in order to promote or strengthen the institution of marriage?

VINCENT McCARTHY: We -- largely the Marriage Law Project started out as an academic think tank and it did research on the laws of every state in the United States as to how those marriage laws came into being and every aspect of those marriage laws.

So when we were asked questions from people around the country, what does this mean in Connecticut or New York, or how did this come about, we were able to provide people with that kind of research.

When issues came up about new statues and new ideas, we took a look at the history of that as well and researched it.

So, it's until the last year, it's been largely a think tank.

REP. STONE: And can you provide me some specific examples of some other either types of legislative proposals that you've promoted or other initiatives you've sponsored which you feel would tend to strengthen the institution of marriage?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Sure.

REP. STONE: As opposed to or in addition to promoting DOMA legislation or preventing or working against same sex marriage legislation.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Well, we promoted heterosexual marriage, traditional man/woman marriage in Hawaii and in Alaska. We were actually out there. My predecessor moved out to Hawaii during that dispute and led the charge, really against the Hawaii decision and the referendum that took place there.

He did the same thing in Alaska in leading the charge for the referendum in Alaska. So, in virtually every battle that's taken place over the past five or six years involving same sex marriage versus heterosexual marriage, we've been involved in one way or another.

REP. STONE: Thank you.

REP. LAWLOR: I'm just curious, because I thought the question Representative Stone asked you was, what have you done to promote or strengthen marriages in the context of heterosexual marriages. Other than fighting against same sex stuff, what has your group actually done to promote, to strengthen so-called traditional marriage?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I think the traditional marriage has been under so much fire and so much pressure right now that I found -- I've been only in this job for about five months, but I found that since I've been in there, instead of having conferences and getting ahead the way I wanted to do, we right away got involved in Rosengarten in Connecticut. We got involved in Lewis v. Harris. We got involved in the case in -- the Goodrich case in Massachusetts. We're underwater right now. I would like to do more of the things that you're talking about and that is in our future, but right now we can't find attorneys to take these cases because there's no money.

REP. LAWLOR: How long has your group been around?

VINCENT McCARTHY: The Marriage Law Party has been around about five or six years.

REP. LAWLOR: Okay. And would it be fair to say that the main theme that it's focused on since its inception was just opposition to same sex marriage or civil union and promotion of DOMA?

VINCENT McCARTHY: No, I would say it's the protection of traditional marriage.

REP. LAWLOR: And so --

VINCENT McCARTHY: By opposing same sex marriage.

REP. LAWLOR: So this think-tank -- I think you stated they looked at the history of marriage and proposals of changing marriage. Have you folks spent any time studying the arguments against interracial marriage that were put forward forty, fifty years ago, what kinds of arguments were used by legislators then?

VINCENT McCARTHY: We did do a history of that, yes.

REP. LAWLOR: And what kind of arguments were used back then to oppose interracial marriage?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Do you know what? I've never read our paper on that. So I don't know. I'd just be talking off the top of my head.

REP. LAWLOR: Could you send me a copy of it when you have a chance?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I'd be happy to do that, sure. I think I can get your address.

REP. LAWLOR: Yes. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It sounds to me that one of the central points that you were stating is that because a man and a woman can come together in marriage and procreate, that it is a unique relationship and therefore that description of marriage is specific and should be protected.

And I guess my argument to that, while I'm very sympathetic to that, is that there are many, many examples of a man and a woman coming together and getting married and deciding not to have children and indeed, in our society, a man and a woman can get together, become married and not even consummate any kind of physical relationship and yet they're still married in the eyes of the law.

So if we take that whole concept of procreation and set it aside, what would be your argument in opposition to the bills being supported by the proponents of same sex marriage?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Marriage does a lot of things in addition to actually procreating children. It is between two individuals who are normally capable of procreating children. In other words, there's a communicative relationship between the male and the female that they are the opposite, that they do fit together emotionally, sexually in just about every way. Even if they decide not to have children, there still is a complimentarily to their relationship.

So, one of the things I was thinking when one of the speakers was speaking before is, what's -- one of the things that's wrong with same sex marriage is if there are children around, they've been adopted or whatever, when they're walking around a house and there are homosexuals who are living in that house and the homosexuals are sleeping together, well the kids grow up with an idea that instead of Mommy and Daddy, that there are two Daddies in life.

SEN. KISSEL: No, I understand that. But not to interrupt you, but I have to, again you're gearing towards children in the household and that's sort of tied into procreation. And I'm just saying two consenting adults, no children involved, there are any number of those relationships where it's a man and a woman and they're married, and so what would be a good argument by this legislature when we have folks who say, well you know, it's two woman, we're just like these other couples that don't have children. There's not going to be children in our household, but we want our relationship to be recognized in the eyes of the law like the gentleman previous to you testified. "I pay taxes, I want the same rights as everybody else." What's your response to that argument?

VINCENT McCARTHY: First of all, he does have the same rights as everybody else. It's just that the law says that only people of the opposite sex can marry. I mean, he can marry someone of the opposite sex. The laws apply to him as they apply to anyone else.

Secondly, there's a unitive function to marriage in addition to the procreative function. And the unitive functions, from the beginning of time, has been to draw the love of man and woman together and again, that works on every single level, biologically, psychologically, physically. Man and woman are built even physically to go together, to fit together.

There are studies on the female genitalia.

SEN. KISSEL: You don't have to go that far.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Okay.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Senator Kissel. Now I know what it takes to get you blush, Senator.

Representative -- actually, Representative Stone had another question, but before we return to a second question, do any other members of the committee have any questions for the first time?

Representative Stone.

REP. STONE: Thank you, Senator. And I apologize. I forgot my follow-up. I appreciate the indulgence of the Chair in allowing me to ask just one question on the proposed legislation which is the DOMA legislation, H.B. 5356.

I know that you only started with this, with the Marriage Institute five months ago, but you're aware that in 1999 or in 2000 -- 2000, I believe, the Legislature passed a bill regarding co-parent adoption. Are you aware of that?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Yes, I am.

REP. STONE: Okay. As part of that bill, we enacted a state policy or promulgated a state policy which is contained in our statutes, 45a-727a.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Right. Section 7(4).

REP. STONE: Yes.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Is that what you're getting to?

REP. STONE: Yes. If that section were to remain the current law of the State of Connecticut, do you see a need to pass the DOMA bill?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Absolutely.

REP. STONE: Why is that?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Because that section isn't strong enough in and of itself to protect the State from people coming here from Vermont or from Massachusetts if the Goodrich case goes that way and Massachusetts grants same sex marriage. I don't think that is strong enough.

What it says essentially is that the policy of the State of Connecticut is limited to marriage between a man and a woman, but as you know, that policy could be changed overnight in a judicial decision. A judge could come along in a new case and say well, I don't see anything in the statutes here other than the mere statement that there's a policy. I'd rather have DOMA.

REP. STONE: Well, we may have to agree to disagree on that one, but thank you for your comments.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Just one quick question. I think you said that you considered the primary function of a marriage to be for the purpose of raising, in a unitary context, children. Is that correct?

VINCENT McCARTHY: It's procreative function and a unitive function, two functions.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. Well, let me ask you this. If the State of Connecticut and this General Assembly were to pass either the same sex marriage bill or the civil union bill, how would that diminish the qualitative functions that you've just talked about with respect to individuals who are heterosexual? Does the -- let me put it a different way.

Would a heterosexual relationship be diminished, visa vie their children, if the State were to acknowledge civil unions?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I'm not sure that the heterosexual relationship would be diminished, but the problems would be caused in the same sex marriage or the civil union "relationship" --

SEN. MCDONALD: I'm talking about the heterosexual unions first and I'm going to get to the second part in a moment.

In your opinion, would heterosexual relationships, the family units of which you speak so kindly or strongly, would they be diminished, in your mind, if the State were to recognize same sex relationships?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I think that they would be diminished in that you've got the possibility of adoption out there. You can adopt children and what would happen is then that child comes into that same sex family and again, begins to think that that's what a family is. It's same sex partners, two males or two females. You know, Johnnie has two daddies or Jill has two mommies.

SEN. MCDONALD: I'm not talking about Johnnie and Jill at the moment. I'm talking about the heterosexual relationship, if you and -- I'm assuming that you're married.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Yes.

SEN. MCDONALD: If you and your wife have children, do you think that the quality of the relationship that you have with your children would be, in any way, diminished --

VINCENT McCARTHY: No, I don't.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. Thank you. Now, with respect to - you also testified, at least with respect to the previous speaker, that his relationship was afforded the same legal rights as a straight couple would have except for the fact that there was no official recognition of that relationship.

And I am focusing just primarily on the Detective's testimony that without a will in place, he was not the -- not capable of benefiting from the statutes that deal with intestacy.

Would you care to comment?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Yeah, change the laws of intestacy. Change the statutory laws of intestacy to allow an individual to make some kind of oral statement throughout his life or if he lives with someone for a certain period of time and they're faithful to each other and you can prove that, I think there are changes that could be made to the law of intestacy.

SEN. MCDONALD: So, you are not -- we have a nonpartisan report itemizing approximately 588 laws that have the use of marriage or the relationship of marriage between two individuals and confer benefits and responsibilities on those individuals.

It is not your position then, -- am I correct, that all of those laws should be denied to individuals who are of the same gender?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Absolutely not. I think there are many of them that are unfair and have nothing to do with marriage, nothing to do with the fact that they're not married. The right to visit a same sex partner in jail, in the hospital, things like that, there's -- I think those regulations are unfair and should be changed.

SEN. MCDONALD: Where would you, if you were a legislator then, where would you draw the line on which of those 588 rights and responsibilities you would confer upon individuals who are of the same gender?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I would have people in the legislative staff go through them, call them out, and then just keep calling them out until you get the ones that you feel are unfair and have nothing to do with being married or not.

For example, the regulation that you can't visit a same sex partner in a hospital. What does that have to do with whether you're married to the person or not?

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay.

VINCENT McCARTHY: It doesn't. Visit a person in jail. What does that have to do with whether you're married or not?

SEN. MCDONALD: I don't intend to go through all 588 of those laws, but one comes to mind that under our law and under the law of most jurisdictions in the country, a spouse or husband or a wife is not required to testify against another spouse in the context of any kind of criminal proceeding.

Do you think that that should -- just as an illustrative example, do you think that that should be eliminated for same sex partners, as well?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I'm going to beg off on the question because I'm not sure that that's true anymore. I'm not sure that that's true in most jurisdictions even and I'm not sure that there aren't exceptions to that rule even in the jurisdictions in which it is still in effect.

SEN. MCDONALD: The spousal privilege still exists in the State of Connecticut and --

VINCENT McCARTHY: Under all circumstances, including murder?

SEN. MCDONALD: Well, communications between a husband and a wife, confidential communications between a husband and a wife are privileged under the law of the State of Connecticut and I'm asking you if, in your opinion, you would allow for the same type of privilege for individuals who are of the same gender and in a committed relationship?

VINCENT McCARTHY: Well, if you're going to view it as a privilege, and I think if I were the same sex partner, I don't think I'd want to view it as a privilege or even want it, but it certainly is not -- you don't have to be married to have that privilege.

SEN. MCDONALD: Yes, you do, under the State of Connecticut's laws.

VINCENT McCARTHY: No, but under what I'm trying to say to you is you don't have to, in a practical sense, you don't have to be married to hold that privilege.

SEN. MCDONALD: You can be compelled in the State of Connecticut to disclose confidential information --

VINCENT McCARTHY: And you're saying, should you therefore likewise be compelled if you've lived with someone for a certain period of time?

SEN. MCDONALD: No. I'm saying, would you confer the same type of privilege of spousal confidentiality to individuals of the same gender?

VINCENT McCARTHY: I see what you mean. Yes, I would.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? Thank you very much.

VINCENT McCARTHY: Okay.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. The next speaker will be Rabbi Elissa Kohen, followed by Dr. Finn, and then Carolyn Ikari. I should, by the way, apologize if I do injustice to anybody's name.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: You were great with my name. Thanks.

Good afternoon. My name is Elissa Cohen and I am the Associate Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, Connecticut, a reformed Jewish congregation with a membership of 1250 families.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today in support of H.B. 6389, an act that would grant to gay and lesbian citizens equal civil rights.

It might make more sense to explore the merits of this act by hearing testimony from lawyers and civil rights scholars rather than priests and rabbis. Although the question of religion looms in large in this debate, so I appreciate the chance to speak to you as a rabbi and as a religious person.

In some religious communities, loving another human being of the same gender is considered a sin. Committing to that human being of the same gender and living a life of respect, support, and dignity is that to offend God. I do not understand those ideas. And I do not know the God they are talking about.

But in our democratic pluralistic society I must respect the right of those religious communities to believe and behave in ways that confuse and even sadden me.

I do not and we must not give those communities the right to dictate how all of us must believe and behave.

I am proud to belong to a religious tradition that does not believe homosexuality is sinful. People sometimes ask me how I can say that Judaism does not condemn homosexuality when the Bible says, "do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman." My answer is that to read a single verse of the Jewish Bible without context, without an understanding of how its interpretation has evolved over time, is to misconstrue God's revelation. We don't read the Bible that way.

The best example I have is in Exodus. The penalty for physical assault shall be eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etcetera. You might then assume that if you knock my eye out, I can physically take your eye out as compensation. Judaism has never read that verse to justify mutilation of another person as fair punishment. The Jewish understanding has always been that some compensation is required because people cannot be allowed to injure each other without penalty.

The same is true for the verse about homosexuality. It comes in the midst of prohibitions against sexual behavior that would undermine the backbone of society, the family. Adultery, for instance is prohibited because it destroys families. Sex between men was prohibited because it could not be part of a loving, committed relationship. That didn't exist. Two men or women can and do form unions that enhance society rather than destroying it.

The prohibition is not valid because the underlying assumption is not true. Gay/lesbian relationships are not inherently destructive of family or society.

No matter how many times I stand under the chupah, the marriage canopy, to give Jewish sanctification to the union of a gay or lesbian couple, I cannot grant them the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. That power is entirely in your hands and I am hopeful that you will exercise it with wisdom and integrity.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Hi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of things and I always get confused with this and I probably should be more up to date on my Jewish theology, but there's orthodox, there's reformed and there's another one?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Conservative and reconstructionist.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. And do you -- are you with one of those groups?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Yes. I am a reformed Rabbi.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. Is it fair to say that anyone within the reformed area would have the same belief that you have, that there's no proscription on same sex --

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: No, it wouldn't be fair to say that. We're not a community that values a complete unity of agreement, unity of belief, maybe I should say.

SEN. KISSEL: Just like the Legislature.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Just like the Legislature, just like our society.

SEN. KISSEL: So more like Congregationalists that --

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I'm sorry.

SEN. KISSEL: More like a Congregationalist where each church is sort of different?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: And I would have to say that I'm not as up, perhaps, on my Christian theology as I might be, but I think that's probably a fair comparison.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay, Rabbi. Thank you.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: But I would also, if I could.

SEN. KISSEL: Sure.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I would also say that even if not every person who considers themselves a reformed Jew would agree with what I've said, the main bodies of the reform movement, the union of American Hebrew Congregations, which is our congregational organization, and the CCAR, which is our rabbinic organization, have repeatedly affirmed the rights of gays and lesbians, both in the civil realm and in the religious realm.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. And would it tend to be -- and again, labels can be very misleading, would conservative Jewish folks and Orthodox Jewish folks be more in disagreement with that position?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I don't think that's necessarily a one-to-one correlation.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. And my last question is, California has domestic partnerships. We have two bills before us. One is civil union and one is marriage. Do you think that if Connecticut passed either domestic partnerships or civil unions, that that would be sufficient to address this issue or that we would expect to see another bill before us in the years to come and that the ultimate goal is marriage and anything short of marriage is really not equal rights and while that, as Ms. Brett had stated, while that maybe a laudable step in that direction, and very worthwhile, that unless we address the marriage issue head-on, we're short of where we have to be in this debate?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Well, I think I would agree with Ms. Brett and say that nothing is equal to marriage except to marriage.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much, Rabbi.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Other questions? Representative Cafero.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Rabbi. Thank you for coming this afternoon.

Rabbi, have you always had the beliefs that you have that you've testified to today?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: In regard to gay and lesbian marriage?

REP. CAFERO: Yes. I would say I probably -- certainly they've developed over time as all of my beliefs and knowledge have developed.

REP. CAFERO: Was there a time in that development where you had doubts if that was the right way to go?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: No.

REP. CAFERO: Can you understand that there are some people that do have -- that are struggling with the issue?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I can certainly understand that there are people who struggle with the issue.

REP. CAFERO: And you respect that struggle that the individual is going through?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I respect the struggle. I respect, as I said in my testimony, that we are in a pluralistic society and that there are people who will not struggle with the issue but vehemently disagree with me and I certainly believe that they have the right to disagree with me. What I don't believe they have the right to do is dictate what the civil rights and privileges of all the citizens of the State of Connecticut and one day, perhaps, of the country have the right to.

REP. CAFERO: The reason I ask that, Rabbi -- thank you for your answer. The reason I ask that is because I envy and frankly marvel at those on either side of this issue that have absolutely no question in their mind about their position. They are just as clear as a bell to them and there is no moving off their position and they look at some and say how could you even doubt or think or -- most people I know struggle with this issue. In fact, many gay people that I know struggle with this issue.

And I guess for -- and I don't have statistics, but I would bet you the vast majority of people, regardless of where they ultimately fall on the matter, struggle with the issue.

What would you say to them, knowing that the argument either for or against that's unequivocal, without doubt, ain't working? What would you say to them to enlighten them in their struggle?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: I think that I have certainly experienced what you're talking about with many people. And while I say I have not ever had a radically different position on this issue, I certainly have engaged with many people that I know in this question and have evolved in my own thinking.

What would I say to them? I would say that the best possibility that we all have of understanding one another is to continue an open and honest dialogue.

I have, since coming to this congregation, had several people, many people, I suppose, come to talk to me about what does Judaism say about homosexuality because for many people what they have always learned is that all religious traditions are opposed to the love of two men or two women. And that's sort of the simple answer that's kept us going for quite a long time. Now I think what we are beginning to understand is that we need to look deeper into our traditions.

In terms of specifically what I might say to a Jewish congregant who comes to me and says they're struggling with this issue. I think what I would talk to them about is the other values with Judaism that inform the way that we interpret statements like the one I talked about in my testimony. Other values that we are all created in the image of God. It's one of the first things that we read about humanity. And if we are all created in the image of God, how can some of us not be as worthy of protections, rights, privileges than others based simply on our nature, who we are?

I would also talk about principles like loving your neighbor as yourself, which in our tradition, is really among the highest principles. So that even if I disagree with another person, Judaism interprets loving a little bit differently, perhaps, than most people think about it. We don't say that I actually have to love everybody, including those people who disagree with us, but that I have to be respectful and act toward that person as if they were someone whom I actually felt that emotional love for and honor that person, show them respect, treat them with dignity.

REP. CAFERO: In your learning process to become a Rabbi and with this whole issue in mind, the biblical phrase that you quoted earlier, did you struggle with that? Did you struggle with justifying that or did it just come to you?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Oh, it didn't just come to me. There are many verses in the Bible that are difficult for me as a woman to read and simply say oh, great, that's easy to understand. There are many verses that are difficult because the context of biblical life was very different than it is today and part of the process of Judaism is to say that we do struggle with those texts and that we have the right to struggle with those texts. Judaism is a dynamic evolving religion, it always has been. And we are commanded to engage with the text. When we study the Bible, we say a blessing, (inaudible-spoke Hebrew) that you must busy yourself, engage with the words of the Torah. That's what our study is about and that's what our process is about.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? I just have a quick one.

You don't understand either of these bills -- I lost my sheet of the numbers of them. Either the same sex marriage or the civil union bills to infringe in any way on the religious beliefs of any religious right. Is that correct?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Absolutely not. It seems clear to me that regardless of what the Legislature chooses to do, I will have the right either to officiate at a ceremony for a gay or lesbian couple or not to, depending on my religious perspective.

SEN. MCDONALD: So while I understand and appreciate your training and experience as a Rabbi, the issue that we are focused on is what the civil authority should or should not confer upon individuals and doesn't intend to infringe in any way on anybody's religious beliefs. That's correct?

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Absolutely.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

RABBI ELISSA KOHEN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Dr. Finn, followed by Carolyn Ikari and then Reverend Eric Thompson.

DR. THOMAS FINN: I hope they're not leaving because of me.

SEN. MCDONALD: Well, it's better that they leave before you start speaking than after you start speaking.

DR. THOMAS FINN: Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

SEN. MCDONALD: Please proceed.

DR. THOMAS FINN: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, and members of the Judiciary Committee.

I am Dr. Thomas Finn, a psychologist in clinical practice in Southington and I'm voicing my support for the Defense of Marriage Act.

I would like to focus my comments this afternoon on children and what kids need to grow in the healthiest ways possible.

As I have watched this debate unfold, I'm a little bit troubled by the way in which it seems to have been polarized into a rights versus religion discussion. And the concern there is that I think we can miss some of the other important pieces that we have to look at, and in my mind, the health and well being of children is one of the main ones.

In talking about the issues involved here, to me it's very clear that the most stable and nurturing foundation for the rearing of children is one rooted in a marriage between a man and a woman, dedicated to a lifetime of love, sacrifice, and commitment.

And this is, in no way, intended to devalue the single parent family like the one I grew up in or any other dimension of family. But it really is to take a look at how important it is for us to protect the definition of marriage which helps the rearing of children most effectively.

I'm sure you've been presented or will be presented, either in writing or in testimony, a lot of statements from professionals, from different organizations that are really contrary in saying that there is no risk to children if marriage is redefined. But every research study or position paper that I have read it really has been able to prove or to provide scientifically sound and reliable support for these claims. The conclusions amount to a little more than an opinion sprinkled with some statistics which accumulate over decades are later cited as a growing body of scientific literature.

These opinions are then used by professional organizations as the basis for new positions supporting the same sex union agenda.

If you read the phrases or comments like "there's no evidence to suggest that children raised in gay or lesbian households are any different from children raised in heterosexual households", if I could just restate that a little bit, I would say it's actually saying we compare children reared in same sex households to children raised by single heterosexual mothers, not children living with their mothers and fathers.

We made our comparisons without using any research methods that could detect any real differences and we only used small numbers of gay and lesbian subjects who probably had a bio similar to ours in a way I'll briefly mention these flaws which invalidate any findings at the end of our journal articles. We'll ignore these problems and say the things we like to say anyway.

And the key there to me is that we have to be very careful not to let pseudo-science influence decisions in this matter.

Some children of same sex couples maybe thriving and that is clearly good. We've heard from many of these young people here in previous testimony and I'm sure we will hear from some today.

And the key is, for me, is that subjectively we have to try to move or objectively we have to move beyond the opinions and look at what a more reliable body of literature tells us and that is specifically that kids who live with a mom and dad are generally better off academically, financially, socially, behaviorally, and have better health. And no one would conclude that a certain child that grows up in any home would be unable to prosper. The kids who grow up without both a mom and dad present are just open or at least they seem to have much higher rates of difficulties in all the areas I just mentioned.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Are you finished?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Can I do a one sentence summary?

SEN. MCDONALD: Sure.

DR. THOMAS FINN: I would offer that based on centuries of experience and valid research, that only when a man and woman lovingly commit themselves in marriage to a lifetime of fidelity and responsibility are the best interest of children and society served.

I hope that we will be able to honor and preserve marriage as a faithful union of one man and one woman.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

DR. THOMAS FINN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Questions? Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just, Dr. Finn, you testified back in December, when we were raising this specific issue of what, if any, effect would the recognition of same sex couples have on children of those couples. And as you know, our research staff was trying to identify groups that take various positions on this and we were able to identify statements by the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Academy of Family Physicians, the Academy of Pediatrics, the Psychiatric Association, the Psycho-Analytic Association, the Psychological Association, the Child Welfare League of America, and the North American Council on Adoptable Children who have taken formal positions on this issue and all of them have, in effect, endorsed the legal recognition of same sex relationships and endorsed the adoption of children by gay couples, pursuant to the same rules that apply to everybody else.

Are you a member of any association that has taken a contrary position on this?

DR. THOMAS FINN: No, I'm not.

REP. LAWLOR: And you understand that under Connecticut law there already are same sex parents of children and so we're not really discussing whether or not that's going to change. All we're discussing is whether or not the relationship of the parents of these children will be legally recognized. And is that a bad thing, given the reality in our state today that there are same sex partners raising kids? Would it be a bad idea to legally recognize both of those parents as de facto spouses?

DR. THOMAS FINN: To me, I look down the road to the likelihood that if same sex unions or marriages are sanctioned by the State, it's likely that the number of children in those relationships is going to increase. And the concern -- all those organizations that you mentioned, what they put into their context of their position papers on those issues were basically conclusions that said that those children who were growing up in a same sex household shared characteristics similar to children growing up in a single mother family. And the reality that we know in a very broad way of research-wise is that there are higher risks in those kinds of settings.

So my concern is that we will be exposing children to greater risks down the road.

REP. LAWLOR: And I think you pointed out in an ideal world, every child would have two parents and in your words, a man and a woman as their parents, but you, yourself said you were raised by a single -- in a single parent family and I was for a while myself and you know, doesn't it really matter on who the actual parent or parents are more so than what the nature of their sexual orientation is? Isn't that really what matters here?

DR. THOMAS FINN: I would think in any individual case, there could be many different outcomes.

REP. LAWLOR: So don't you think we should have rules that give the - if same sex parents can raise a kid very well, why shouldn't we make it easier for them to do that instead of more complicated as is the case today?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Well, I'm not sure it would be more complicated.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, if one parent dies, for example and the other parent is not adopted or if there's a whole variety of things where it's not the immediate family member. I mean, we're going to hear later today all these stories. We've heard them before. These are real life stories of how complicated life can get without the rules everyone else takes for granted applying to you.

Wouldn't it be better for the kids if everybody acknowledged that their parents were really their parents?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Again, I don't think that in the biggest picture of what's going to be best for society as a whole, to look at it from that perspective is really the way to go. I think there maybe individual situations where different things could happen. I don't know that. But what I'm looking at is that broad picture of just the difference between children who grow up with a mom and a dad at home and children who don't and I have concerns about them.

REP. LAWLOR: Do you think we should repeal the co-parent adoption statute we passed a few years ago?

DR. THOMAS FINN: No, I'm not sure I want to comment on that because again, on an individual case, an individual basis, (inaudible-background coughing) to do that, but I'm not really making my comments based on that focus. I'm really looking at that broad picture.

REP. LAWLOR: Okay. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative Rowe was next.

REP. ROWE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr., what's your degree in, I'm sorry?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Psychology.

REP. ROWE: Okay. Obviously, a stable flourishing society requires stable and flourishing families, it seems to me anyway. I was looking through your written testimony and you referenced some studies which would indicate that same sex couples or allowing same sex couples to marry would not tend to strengthen an institution that is already being attack or destabilized.

Can you talk about some of the statistics you referenced in your written testimony?

DR. THOMAS FINN: I'm not sure which specific area of statistics. There are a number of them.

REP. ROWE: Well, any ones that come to your mind as being relevant.

DR. THOMAS FINN: Well, I think as I mentioned, the numbers or percentages of children, when you compare children raised in a household with a mother and father present versus the children raised in households where there is not a mother and father present, do better in school, they do better on measures of their health, social functioning, behavioral difficulties, etcetera.

When --

REP. ROWE: You might want to use your microphone a little bit better.

DR. THOMAS FINN: When we look more at children who grow up in single parent homes, there are greater difficulties in those areas, academically, socially, behaviorally, emotionally.

There are also some concerns that when we look at a lot of the data about the same sex household with potentially other challenges children will face there, things like increased levels of disease, violence, incidents of mental health issues, things like that, would also have impact on a child's development.

Again, I don't think we can really say that you can take any study or any group of statistics and predict what's going to happen in any one home, but again, when you look at that broad picture all together, that's where I'm concerned.

REP. ROWE: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Representative Cafero.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sir, I'm not a psychologist, but let me ask you. Have you counseled same sex couples who are raising children?

DR. THOMAS FINN: One.

REP. CAFERO: One. And have you counseled single parents that are raising children?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Yes, many.

REP. CAFERO: And you, as your testimony indicated, you're a product of a single family or a single parent household.

I have certainly not counseled, that's not my profession, but I have known and talked to both same sex couples who are raising children and single parent households. And in both instances, it was always desirable at some point that a member of the opposite sex have some involvement in the child's life. For instance, I know of two same sex couple, male, who are raising a daughter. And they want to -- though they're excellent parents to this child, they feel that it is necessary that their daughter be exposed to a nurturing relationship with a woman. Obviously, between their union, they're both males and they cannot provide that.

But they find that it is desirable for their daughter (inaudible-tape switched sides-some dialogue not recorded) who are parents, be it by death or divorce or other circumstance, of a male child finds it, at some point, typically in that thirteen to fifteen year old age, that there is some male influence in their life, a nurturing close relationship with a male.

I'm not a psychologist. What the hell do I know? But have you found that to be the case at all?

DR. THOMAS FINN: That people try to find those role models?

REP. CAFERO: Yes, regardless of their position on marriage, same sex or otherwise, that in the normal course of human development, it is desirable for a child to have a close nurturing relationship with members of both the male sex and the female sex.

DR. THOMAS FINN: Well, I think it's vital that children have the exposure that you're describing, but I think there's no comparison between trying to find a nurturing relationship as the child is older by being able to grow up in a home where there is that male/female modeling and bonding present from birth.

REP. CAFERO: Let me ask you a question I asked the Rabbi and I don't know if you were here when I was questioning her.

I assume you are in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, that's your testimony?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Right.

REP. CAFERO: Is this something, an issue that in your mind is clear as a bell to you and has it always been such or did you evolve to that position?

DR. THOMAS FINN: I think my support of the bill is as clear as a bell, but I don't think that it's easy to get to that bell or that clarity simply because there's so much emotion and human struggle involved in this whole process, in this whole issue.

And how can you not feel your heart respond to the -- I can't remember his name now, but the police officer from New York, a very sad, tragic story.

So I think that the reality of the struggle is -- I don't see how you cannot feel that. To think well do you -- is what we're looking at making sense? Is what we're -- is what I'm here supporting really the best thing? And I read a lot. I keep going back to the issue and I think it's important that we do that because then when we come to the sense of clarity that I have, I'm very confident. But I don't see how it can't be difficult.

REP. CAFERO: When we passed what was known as, I guess, the Baby Z. law, an act concerning the best interest of the child, which allowed a gay couple to jointly adopt a child as opposed to individually adopt, one of the byproducts of that law a declaration within the law that it is the public policy of the State of Connecticut that a marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

What does the DOMA law do that that statement doesn't do?

DR. THOMAS FINN: I'm going to apologize. I'm not sure I followed that question.

REP. CAFERO: Well, and correct me if I'm wrong. I thought when we passed the Baby Z. legislation, the act allowing gay couples to adopt a child, part of the law contained a statement which said that it's the public policy of the State of Connecticut that a marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It made it very clear that that's how we, as a state, defined marriage.

What does this DOMA law that we are talking about today do that what I just stated to you doesn't do?

DR. THOMAS FINN: I'm not the legal eagle that I think can probably answer that best.

REP. CAFERO: I respect that.

DR. THOMAS FINN: And I'm not even sure --

REP. CAFERO: I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I'm trying to understand and maybe I have it wrong, but --

DR. THOMAS FINN: And I don't know. My sense would be that if that -- however that's written in that previous law, in some way was very firm. I don't know that we'd be here talking about that again. But I think someone before was passing things to legal knowledge.

REP. CAFERO: I appreciate that.

DR. THOMAS FINN: I respectfully have to pass that one.

REP. CAFERO: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? Dr., just a couple of quick ones. And forgive me, I may have missed it.

Did you say what kind of psychologist you are?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Clinical psychologist.

SEN. MCDONALD: Clinical psychologist. Do you do family counseling at all?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Yes.

SEN. MCDONALD: And is your practice on marriage counseling, as well?

DR. THOMAS FINN: It includes that.

SEN. MCDONALD: It includes that. Okay. So you're familiar with the statistic that one in two marriages ends in divorce? Has that been your experience?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Exactly what that means is questionable, but that's certainly a statistic that's mentioned.

SEN. MCDONALD: And in your practice, have you ever borne witness to marriages that stay together "for the benefit of the children" whether there's a lot of anger and distrust between the husband and wife?

DR. THOMAS FINN: That's visibly being seen by the kids?

SEN. MCDONALD: Yes.

DR. THOMAS FINN: My experience is most of those don't stay together. If it's to the point where that is very severe --

SEN. MCDONALD: But before a marriage breaks down at that level, is it your belief that that is the same kind of nurturing environment for the children to which you've testified is the ideal in a marriage?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Again, if I'm understanding it, if the question is, if parents are battling with one another in front of the kids to the point that that's abusive and disruptive to the kids, certainly that's not the ideal.

SEN. MCDONALD: So from your perspective, an environment where the husband and wife are providing a nurturing positive environment for their children is the ideal of which you were speaking, not where there's arguing and fighting between the spouses and perhaps even domestic violence?

DR. THOMAS FINN: Well, I think certainly when you get to violence, it's a different story. Arguing, fighting, that is going to happen in all different degrees. My hope would be that those parents take the responsibility to work that out in ways that don't hurt their kids.

SEN. MCDONALD: Well, but the dichotomy, of course, is the situation where you have a very dysfunctional home life arrangement where a husband and wife are fighting constantly and perhaps are even involved in domestic violence, which is, at least arguably very destructive to the upbringing of the children and yet you could have a relationship with two members of the same sex who aren't having the same kind of violence or argumentative nature or their hostility is not there, which is a more nurturing environment for the children. Which would you choose?

DR. THOMAS FINN: To me, that's not an either/or kind of question. I think that there are many kids who are just inherently resilient. There are many kids, whether it be in a nurturing family in either category, could have difficulty because not because there's violence, but that there are other issues involved there.

So to me, I don't think that an either/or context like that really speaks to the well being of kids in the broad level that we need to look at it.

SEN. MCDONALD: Well, would you agree that it is the overall quality of the family environment which is most important to the welfare of the child growing up in that family?

DR. THOMAS FINN: No, I think that's one dimension on a pretty large range -- pretty broad range of dimensions. Really it's the nature of the relationships that exist between the child and their parents, the degree to which they are nurturing that seems to be the best predictor, particularly or most importantly when there is both a mother and father in that picture.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much. Next is going to be Carolyn Ikari, followed by Reverend Thompson and then Senator Prague.

CAROLYN IKARI: Good afternoon. My name is Carolyn Ikari. I'm speaking this afternoon on behalf of myself and my husband, Mathew Colelo. We both send our best to our good friend and Representative, Representative Doyle, a good friend, Representative Farr, and our good friend and my husband's classmate, Senator John Kissel.

It's an honor and a privilege to be here this afternoon.

My husband, Mathew Colelo and I are both attorneys. We live in Wethersfield and we're married. We've been married for six years now. We have three children. Benjamin is three; Lauren is one; and Kendall will turn three months old on Saturday and you may have heard her for a few moments there during the hearing before, but since Kendall has decided that she needs to testify too, she's waiting for me out in the hallway.

We support equal rights for lesbian and gay, bisexual and transgender persons and we support same sex marriage. It's simply obvious to us that the prohibition on marriage or the inability to marry for this group of people is simply the denial of a basic human right.

And we urge you, as our legislators, to remedy this right and we want to make clear that our marriage is certainly not threatened by the prospect of our gay or lesbian friends solidifying their families and their committed relationships in their own marriages.

My testimony is in a booklet that you may have received before and I want to end my remarks this afternoon the same way I did with my written testimony, which is with a story about my family.

We believe that withholding rights from persons because of their sexual orientation is as arbitrary and repulsive as drawing those same lines as on the basis of race. And that has occurred in my own family. My father was married previously. He lived in Virginia. My father -- I'm Japanese-America. My father is Japanese-American. My father's previous wife is Caucasian and they lived in Virginia where you couldn't -- they settled in Virginia and you -- there were laws, as many people will know and as this committee has heard several times before, there were laws against interracial marriage in many states, including Virginia until very, very recently. The Virginia law stood until 1967 when the Supreme Court overturned it, but my father sought his divorce from his previous wife before the Supreme Court had the opportunity to reach that issue. So when they sought to obtain their divorce, they were advised that basically they couldn't or they shouldn't do it in Virginia, that they should travel from Richmond up to Washington, D.C. and procure legal assistance there, get their divorce there. In particular, the concern was with my sister, my half-sister Karen who would be rendered essentially illegitimate if they attempted to go through the legal proceeding in Virginia because in the eyes of Virginia law it was going to be as if their marriage had never existed.

And you know, we really ought to shake our heads that it was not that long ago that these were the kinds of challenges and hurdles that we were confronting on the basis of race and frankly, the barriers to same sex marriage in this state make us shake our heads in the same way.

And we appeal to you to remedy this situation.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you. Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Carolyn, thank you so much for taking the time. First of all, my wife and I had a wonderful time at your house over the summer. We've got to do that again. Yes, people that disagree on this issue can still be friends. And also congratulations on the birth of your child. That's fantastic.

CAROLYN IKARI: Thank you, John.

SEN. KISSEL: I'm really very, very happy for you and Mathew.

I have a question and I'm asking you in your -- because you're a very, very intelligent attorney and I'm wondering, if this state ended up passing a marriage law, same sex marriage law, would that give those individuals, let's say someone pursuant to those statutes now gets married, would they have a foundation to march into federal court and challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act?

CAROLYN IKARI: As I think somebody mentioned earlier, that questions like these are sometimes where the $64 thousand question is in some regards.

I should caution you that in the midst of having a baby and moving houses and that kind of thing, I have not read the text of the statute. So I can't comment specifically on the legislative language and how that would hold up and it's certainly possible that there maybe a clash where there's context where the State recognized rights may appear to conflict with the statute that you're talking about. And it would be my hope that the equal right conferred by the Connecticut statute would stand up, but I can't -- I'm not allowed to comment on that in my official capacity because I am an attorney for the government. So I think I'm going to stop right there.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. And I guess my other question is the same one, Carolyn, that I asked Ms. Brett and we have before us a couple of bills. One, civil union, one is marriage and is it your position that if we did pass civil union, that would be a laudable step in the direction that you feel the State should go, but it would be inadequate and that anything short of a full blown same sex marriage bill would be inadequate to address the concerns that you are espousing on behalf of these individuals?

CAROLYN IKARI: I think -- you know, if I were in a relationship -- if I were in a relationship with a woman, I couldn't get married. If civil union offered to me, made available to me, would I take advantage of that? Yeah, likely I would. But in the bigger picture, I can say that certainly as a person of color, the phrase "separate but equal" sticks in my head and it seems to me that, as we've all learned, it's kind of inherently unequal.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. So it would be fair to state that if this Legislature grappled with the issue and we passed civil union, that we should very much expect that the following legislative session we would have a room filled with people saying you're almost there, but it's time for full same sex marriage?

CAROLYN IKARI: You know, I can only speak on behalf of my household and we would -- we support both and I'm here today to voice my support for same sex marriage.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you for taking the time. I know with those three youngsters, it's a handful and I don't know how you juggle everything, but thank you so very much and my best to you and Mathew.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much.

Next is Reverend Eric Thompson, followed by Senator Edith Prague and then Rabbi Hecht.

REV. JOHN RANKIN: I'm not Reverend Thompson, but he's given me his place. He'll be coming up shortly because I have an obligation, a dinner in Cambridge shortly.

I'm Reverend John Rankin, Theological Education Institute in Hartford.

Senator McDonald and Representative --

SEN. MCDONALD: Excuse me. That's fine. Because I did not say this ahead of time, you're more than welcome to testify, but we're not going to allow substitutions. If people aren't here, we'll move onto the next speaker. It's just not fair to everybody who has signed up.

But since I did not say that at the outset, feel free to proceed.

REV. JOHN RANKIN: Well, it wasn't a substitution. I'm just a few people down the line. He just switched places. But anyhow.

Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor, good afternoon. These last two years, same sex marriage advocates have introduced religious dimension bringing selective clergy to testify before your committee and the press. They sought, in part, to recruit Jesus as one of their own and this is unbiblical.

This year, on short notice, 200 ministers in Connecticut have agreed on an affirmation, published in this morning's Hartford Courant. It addresses the nature of unalienable rights and how same sex marriage is intrinsically opposite. We do so out of concern for the equal dignity and civil rights for all people.

At a prior level, we have two choices in life; trust or distrust. In the social compact, trust begins with the mutual equality and complementarity of man and woman in faithful marriage, then modeled for their children. In homosexual relationships, there's no such complementarity, no such diversity.

Sexual intimacy outside of true marriage leads to distrust How much trust is there between former lovers, heterosexual or homosexual?

The history of same sex marriage advocacy aims for a definition of "open marriage" where mutual fidelity is not expected.

Why is there war between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East today? tracing back to Abraham and Sarah, circa 1900 B.C., it is rooted in the brokenness of the marriage covenant, in the reification of Hagar into a concubine and surrogate mother. This produced war between Sarah and Hagar, then between Ishmael and Issac. Today, the Arab descendants of Ishmael and the Jewish descendants of Issac reap the whirlwind.

In our inner-city ghettos, some 70% of children are born out of wedlock. This leads fatherless boys to join ersatz families or gangs and fatherless girls to become their sexual adjuncts, as drug abuse, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, turf wars, violence, guns and drive-by shootings result.

Why would a woman seek an abortion? Overwhelmingly it's because the man who made her pregnant is not married to her and evades his responsibility to the woman and the child.

Among homosexual persons, there is consistent testimony to broken childhoods, where true marriage was not modeled and/or where physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse was experienced. This is a painful reality that dares not speak its name, for men and women alike, heterosexual and homosexual.

In each of these four examples, sex outside of true marriage has destructive consequences, trust is trampled.

To speak the truth in love, to risk the touching painful realities in the hope of healing, this is what honest compassion and respect is about. This can only happen when true marriage is honored and attempts to redefine it downward are resisted.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I guess the part of this issue that I'm grappling with and I come at it from a perspective that tends to be in sympathy with the traditional value of the traditional notion of a man and a woman marriage.

Is that proponents of keeping it that way it's sort of like a wrath of God argument and it's almost like these other individuals are out of step with morality and I'm trying to address this issue by not addressing it in a judgmental fashion, but more -- we're being asked to change the law and my concern is where will this lead us a state? Where will this lead the social fabric of the State? And can you address the issue, the civil union and the same sex marriage issue in the context of two individuals, male or female, that are not lawbreakers, that are very moral individuals, that did not have broken childhoods, that had a wonderful mom and a dad when they were growing up, that for whatever reason this is the way they are in their hearts, that they're very much committed to one another and that in all respect, on their own testimony, they love one another just like a man and a woman would love one another and they have no interest in having children and as, in many relationships, a man and a woman could be married and not be interested in having children.

How do you respond to that argument that they make?

REV. JOHN RANKIN: Well, the point I tried to make earlier is the complementarity and equality between male and female. I didn't address a wrath of God issue. I didn't address childhood, but we could certainly do that.

The interest is prior and that is that we are male and female. We are left brain and right brain in our complementarity. And all of human psychology demonstrates that all of us need the input of the male and the female into our psychology from the beginning on forward.

This is best modeled in a faithful heterosexual marriage. Now, there are many experiences in a broken humanity that move outside of that. And things well beyond our control. Things upon which only mercy and grace is to be extended. But when it comes to the laws setting standards by which we live, we have to ask ourselves, what are we ordaining? Are we ordaining our best attempt to under-girth the institution of marriage as man and woman and mutual fidelity or are we opening or introducing a slippery slope down to something more dangerous where trust and fidelity is not there?

If you read a lot of the homosexual literature in their own advocacies, not very many of them are in favor of same sex marriage. And not only that, you see a consistent reference to marriage as being open marriage where it's not mutual fidelity. Now, there are exceptions to that, but even yet, you don't have the female and male complementarity that I believe equals psychological health.

And so if we're going to re-fashion the laws that get away from that foundation, we're getting away from a foundation that is intrinsically necessary for all of us. We honor all of those who pursue it and we all pursue it from one angle or another, whether we've had a good healthy childhood with our parents or whether our marriage is healthy or that we have 1,000 broken nesses.

So, I am simply seeking -- and my agenda is in response to the initiative of a same sex marriage. I'm not here out of my own initiative. And I'm simply saying that I believe same sex marriage and I argued differently in the Hartford Courant ad today, I'm arguing that that is destructive for the basis for unalienable rights.

Therefore, I'm seeking to send something that's positive for everyone. And therefore, what I seek to do is make the positive argument for the complementarity of male and female and marriage on outward.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? Thank you very much.

REV. JOHN RANKIN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Next is Senator Edith Prague, followed by Rabbi Hecht and then Dr. Kirsten Dahl.

SEN. PRAGUE: Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor and members of the Judiciary Committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify today.

For the record, I'm Senator Edith Prague of the 19^th District. And I'm here in support of both H.B. 6388 and H.B. 6389.

I firmly believe that every individual in their lifetime has the right to love and happiness. Maybe because I'm 77 years old and I realize how quickly life goes by and how short it really is, that I am committed to allowing everybody to have that right to love and happiness wherever or with whomever they find that with.

I don't think that lawmakers have the right to tell other people how to live their lives as long as they're living lives that are within the law, that are healthy, that are good lives, that are productive lives. I don't think we have the right to deny people that right to happiness. And I'm firmly committed to vote for either of these bills, whichever comes out of this committee.

I heard very compelling testimony today from the Hartford Judge of Probate, Judge Killian and from Leslie Brett whose the Chairman of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. I'm sure that if you haven't -- you weren't here when they testified, that reading their testimony is really a worthwhile expenditure of your time because each and every one of you is going to have to vote on this very important issue that's going to effect thousands and thousands of people.

I, for one, feel so strongly that this is something that is long overdue. We have made people's lives miserable keeping people living secretively because we are sitting in judgment on them. I don't believe we have that right.

And so I just want to end my testimony with thanking you for giving me this opportunity to testify and for each of you to remember that we never get a second chance at this life, that what we have is what we have and when it's not any more available to us and when it's gone, that's it.

So on that basis, each of us is entitled to health, happiness and love.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Senator Prague. Any questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Edith, Senator Prague, always a delight to see you.

I just wanted to make you aware that at a previous public hearing we had testimony regarding an expansion of our hate crimes bill that would include people that committed a crime based upon another one's -- another individual's sexual proclivities or their perceived sexual proclivities.

We haven't voted on whether to send that bill out of here, but I can tell you, from my perspective, because part of your testimony was that we have created an atmosphere in this state that is against individuals that may have same sex partners and while I grapple with this issue and I have strong feelings on this issue, that bill is one that I'm prepared to co-sponsor and completely support and I'd like to see that bill passed this year.

So I think that the State of Connecticut does not tolerate people attacking another individual for a lifestyle choice.

But I guess my question to you is, why you would support both of these bills, and you went harkening back to Ms. Brett's testimony, she had indicated that her person view was that until we get, as a state, to the part of same sex marriage, that these other proposals are nice steps, but the ultimate goal is marriage.

And is it your perspective that while civil union might be laudable and you would support it, that we should really be on our way as a state to full recognition of same sex marriages?

SEN. PRAGUE: Yes, absolutely.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay, thank you, Senator.

SEN. PRAGUE: I can't see it any other way.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Yes, Representative.

REP. HAMZY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question. Senator Prague, we, as a matter of public policy, have established restrictions on marriage. Obviously, that's the reason why we're here today.

There are other restrictions on marriage that we, as a matter of public policy, have enacted. For instance, siblings can't marry each other, close cousins, mother/daughter, mother/son, etcetera.

How do -- would you maintain other restrictions on marriage?

SEN. PRAGUE: I like the bill, as drafted. I think those restrictions in the bill where there is already a relationship that's a close relationship, a mother/daughter, I have four daughters. I don't think that's what we're addressing. We're addressing two people who want to get married, two people of the same sex and I fully approve of that.

REP. HAMZY: If there were three people who were very much in love with each other, right now the current restriction is that we don't allow them to get married or, in turn, to a civil union. Is that something that you would support, as well? I mean, I think their love for each other may not be any different than my love for my wife, but do you still support a restriction on those three people entering into a marriage?

SEN. PRAGUE: I didn't know that three people was a possibility in this legislation. We're talking about two people of the same sex. I didn't see any reference to three people.

REP. HAMZY: Well, I'm asking --

SEN. PRAGUE: Marriage is usually between two people.

REP. HAMZY: But there are other -- there are people of other religions who believe that a marriage is defined differently, but there are so many restrictions on their ability to enter into a marriage and those are policy decisions that we've made as a state and I would suggest, as a nation, and we're here today to reconsider that policy decision.

So, I'm just asking your opinion. Do you think that we should extend the right of marriage to three people or four people?

SEN. PRAGUE: At the moment, Representative Hamzy, I think that's sort of preposterous. I have never heard of anybody asking for that or that even being discussed. And I haven't thought about it and I don't -- I haven't thought about it. Marriage is between two people, whether it's a man and woman, whether it's two men, whether it's two women and that's the issue that we're really dealing with.

REP. HAMZY: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Sorry. Are you done, Representative Hamzy?

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Senator Prague.

SEN. PRAGUE: Thank you, Senator McDonald.

SEN. MCDONALD: I should mention to anybody who is in the overflow rooms that there are about, I'd say, fifteen to twenty empty seats here in 2C if you're interested in coming up here.

The next speaker is Rabbi Hecht, followed by Dr. Kirsten Dahl, followed by Father Robert Washabaugh.

Good afternoon, Rabbi.

RABBI HECHT: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and fellow citizens. Today I present a plea for strengthening family values within our society.

I stand before you today to raise my voice in support and in defense of the moral and just foundations that assure the survival of a civil society, especially in these very traumatic post-9/11 days.

I implore you not to legislate any change whatsoever in the definitions of marriage that will confer the imprimatur of our civil laws to the idea of same sex marriage.

Today as our country debates whether to go to war or not, I feel it is even more important to speak loud and clear with moral clarity on the issue that faces us today in regards to those who are advocating vociferously for recognition of same sex marriage in our great Constitution State.

As a loyal Jewish American who passionately believes in free choice, democracy, and personal destiny, I pledge my allegiance unambiguously to a divine code of law called the Torah or Bible that forms the very bedrock for civilization and thus assures the continuity for a just and stable society.

I speak with feeling because I think we all need to wake up. The opinion that I advocate to you today is not my own personal preference, but rather reflect values and morals that are derived from the Torah which is the highest source of wisdom revealed to humanity at Mt. Sinai by the Creator of heaven and earth and all of humanity.

It is the Torah and the oral traditions recorded at the (inaudible) that informs us that all people are created with a soul and with a capacity of free choice.

I and my fellow Rabbis of the Statewide Rabbinical Council of Council, as well as my colleagues of the National Rabbinic organizations above noted, are very concerned and alarmed that the moral principles primarily for family values that we hold to be correct will be eclipsed and obscured by legislation introduced to recognize same sex marriage as is being proposed by those within the gay and lesbian community.

I hope that society's moral compass will not be taken hostage by their desire for power and empowerments and I quote from one of the individuals, I quote, "to holy transform the definition of family in American culture. Thereby, allowing them to plea final arbitrator of what is moral and ethical."

So what does the Torah and what does Judaism and what does the Bible say? I should make it clear that these laws of such fundamental importance that they apply to every individual and to every society without regard to creed, race or nationality and adherence to these laws assure for a just society and are applicable to both Jew and Gentile.

They are seven universal laws called the Noah heights laws and I will conclude.

The first one is murder is prohibited; elicit sexual relations are proscribed; women should not practice idolatry; robbery is forbidden; not to curse God; not to inflict unnecessary pain or cruelty on any animal; and that society must establish a judicial system to enforce the six aforementioned laws.

I believe that it is up to you, ladies and gentlemen, of this judiciary, to uphold these laws, not because of personal opinion, but because of what has been entrusted to you and to me and to all of us as human beings who are created in the image of God and therefore we follow these laws.

Let me conclude with a very brief story. It will take thirty seconds, if I may.

I am reminded of a reply attributed to Mark Twain, who upon hearing a notoriously corrupt businessman tell him, "before I die, I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments out loud." "I have a better idea", said Twain, "you can stay home in Boston and keep them."

I appeal to all men and women of conscience to do the right thing and that is to reinforce the principles upon which we are not only comfortable with, but we are told to uphold as human beings who are entrusted and empowered with knowledge of the will of a higher being, the Creator of us all.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Rabbi. Please -- as we said early on, we'd appreciate it if you kept expressions of support or opposition to yourselves.

Any questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had asked the previous Rabbi, I guess it would be denomination or branch, what would be yours? Is it like Orthodox, reformed?

RABBI HECHT: I'm a Mainstream Orthodox Synagogue. I'm a fifth generation American. I'm a son of a Rabbi. I have eight siblings with me. We're nine. I am a father. This is really not -- I am married, happily married.

SEN. KISSEL: I guess as someone whose approaching this issue in favor of the traditional concept of marriage, those individuals that come speak, though, speak in terms of morality and my concern is, that for those individuals that are of the same sex that are wonderful citizens in every respect, follow all the laws, that maybe cohabiting as we speak, whatever they do in the privacy of their home, two women or two men, is completely allowed by law. To say that there's something immoral there concerns me because I think the argument rather is, should we create a statute that would say the relationship of marriage is now the same for same sex couples as opposite sex couples and that is a statutory creation of an ideal.

You see, when people talk about laws, we have a lot of laws. Sometimes we're trying to get society to follow those laws, but it's a goal, it's not always the reality. And so I don't view it as something where morality necessarily comes into play.

So could you please state why you feel that if we extended the definition of marriage to individuals of the same sex that that would create, in Connecticut, something adverse to a good flourishing society. What is the danger that you see?

RABBI HECHT: Senator Kissel, you're a very perceptive man and I say this without any reservations, together will all the other individuals that are here.

I personally have nothing to say. I personally, as a human being, have nothing to say on this issue other than my private feelings. But I am not here as a private individual only. I am Director, informed by a higher source of wisdom, as I mentioned.

What makes something moral or something morally neutral? It's a very good question. The whole concept of sexuality is so problematic and difficult that it's not so simple. Even I will tell you and I have eleven children. Okay. However, there are certain basic principles that society has always looked up to. Red line, so to speak and it is understood that the paradigm is one man, one woman, having at the beginning of the Bible. Therefore, man and woman shall leave their father and mother and cleave and be one flesh and so on and so forth.

This is not a Jewish issue. This is not a Christian issue. But it is definitely an issue of civilization and society and family and community.

Hillary Clinton said that, "a few families create a village." And I'm saying that every child is a world and if this law will satisfy certain individuals, God bless them. But it will impact negatively on one boy or one girl of an impressionable age. I am diametrically opposed against it as a personal individual.

And I am also informed because of the biblical value, no matter how you read the Bible, it gives you a certain basis by which to build a good and just society.

This State of Connecticut is a just and wonderful state. It's the Constitution State and I see that there needs to be some kind of underpinning and that is a belief in a higher being, however you interpret this. What is to stop us from the next step between human beings and the lower forms of creation? What is to stop us from other -- what others mentioned, open marriages and so on?

I am not a moral paradigm. But I do have a moral perfection, a book, that shows me how I should be, how we should be, what we can aspire to and that is basic morality. And this is an issue of basic morality. It may not be PC, because today it has become mainstream, this whole concept of alternative lifestyles, but let's face it, the whole issue of sexuality in and of itself, the word itself, the whole concept. If we are not informed by some higher ideas, then one should marry their father or mother or brother or sister. There are no points of reference, ladies and gentlemen.

So I come to you with a point of reference. That's something that has worked for thousands of years. It has worked. If it has worked, why take it apart?

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Rabbi.

REP. LAWLOR: I'd just like to ask you a question, Rabbi. You know, listening to your testimony in the other room and I asked a similar question earlier on and you know, for people who study history, I haven't studied the history of marriage laws until the law few years, in connection with this issue. And it's striking how virtually the identical arguments of the ones you just made have been used so many times when Legislatures have considered changes in marriage laws.

And most recently, in ending the ban on interracial marriages. And before that, it was prohibited for slaves to marry one another. Almost the same arguments are being used and how should we evaluate that, given the fact that each and every time these longstanding taboos are being lifted in Legislatures, how -- why should we take the argument seriously now when I think no one would take the old arguments seriously in the other debates?

RABBI HECHT: Well, I'm also not a perfect student of history, but I will say, those societies that condone, through legislation, same sex marriages and so on, they have a very bid problem with maintaining family structure and community society.

So history tells us that there were problems that were created precisely because there were no limitations that society put on itself as a society.

REP. LAWLOR: But that's what people said when it was proposed to end the ban on interracial marriage. Almost the identical arguments were used, that God put --

RABBI HECHT: It very well may be that people --

REP. LAWLOR: God put different races on different continents for a reason. These are the exact arguments being used by religious people before legislatures.

I'm just wondering, how should we evaluate your argument --

RABBI HECHT: Well, I think there's a common heritage which is not so common. I think there's a common heritage that the founding fathers and mothers of our country established and they did look to the Bible for a lot of direction and if they looked for the direction from the Bible, even though they did not accept everything from the Bible nor did they perhaps all interpret it the same, the Congregationalists, the Pilgrims, that's okay, but they understood that there is some kind of a revealed wisdom that works.

Now we are facing a big question in our society, should we re-evaluate? Should we bequeath certain rights or certain equality? And I say that the issue is not rights or equality. I think this is an issue of protecting our society, all segments of the society. I am not homo--phobic. I am not against anybody who is lesbian or homosexual. I respect them as individuals, as human beings, but the choice to be or not to be, that is also another issue, but if you will read my remarks in totality and in the spirit that it is written, it is written with a sense of honesty.

Ladies and gentlemen, do not do something that may look very politically correct or perhaps good for the moment which will have incredibly long lasting implications in the future.

And I'm a Rabbi in a place that's very liberal, Fairfield County, but when I speak with people about this, they say we are not for this kind of a reinterpretation of marriage. We do want to have this concept of one man and one woman, that should be marriage.

Other issues that you want to bequeath a sense of civil rights and so on and so forth, I'm with you on the same page, Senator Kissel, I understand that nobody should be discriminated against, but let's not put the imprimatur of this Legislature that represents me and a lot of other people here on all sides (inaudible-tape switched sides-some testimony not recorded) - a disenfranchisement, so to speak to me personally, hey, is no longer a biblical level of morality that society can look up to. We're now legislating them away one by one, so let's not get into it. It's separation of church and state. I'm not trying to be cute, really. I'm just thinking about the implications of this, separation of church and state. Leave good enough alone and give civil rights and make sure that there are protections in place, but do not redefine the word of marriage. That's really a hot button issue.

REP. LAWLOR: The one argument that I remember very vividly from the debates about other changes in the marriage laws was to leave well enough alone argument and people, literally -- it's a very instructive thing to go back and look at these old debates about the bans on interracial marriage, bans on marriage between slaves, bans -- there was a federal law prohibiting American citizens from marrying immigrant woman. I mean, all of these laws made a lot of sense when they were passed, apparently, to the Legislatures and the repeal of them met with the same arguments you're making today and I just wonder how do we evaluate that?

RABBI HECHT: I think we need to have a sense of humility in ourselves to look to something that is greater than ourselves to give us some direction and also at the same time to use common sense. And I think that there is enough common sense amongst our legislators and the people in the judiciary to understand that this is a very, very emotional topic and should not be taken to the point where you are going to take one of the foundations of civilization, which are very biblical in origin, as I mentioned, otherwise why get married, because the Bible says so. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense, too many problems. And just leave marriage alone. Let's not get involved with marriage. Leave the marriage alone as is, as it's been practiced throughout the millennia and it works, it's common sense and so on and so forth. And if there are problems that people feel disenfranchised, let's see what we can do for them that they should not be discriminated against. But marriage is holy.

REP. LAWLOR: You know, I hate to prolong this, but you seem like a very thoughtful guy and I just -- and I'm really curious about this. You know, there was a time and it wasn't that long ago, when traditional marriage did not include interracial marriage, for example. I mean, that was not allowed. That was never allowed prior to that. And we changed that law and that's one of the --

RABBI HECHT: Very good. But I would say that if you were to make a (inaudible), in the State of Connecticut, you would get a very, very interesting response and a very heated response.

REP. LAWLOR: On interracial marriage?

RABBI HECHT: Not racial marriage.

REP. LAWLOR: Four hundred years ago you would have gotten --

RABBI HECHT: I'm reinterpreting marriage and this -- I'm sticking to one point. Okay.

REP. LAWLOR: Okay, I've got that.

RABBI HECHT: And my one point is, is that marriage is a holy act. Marriage is a holy concept. It's a religious concept, not a civil concept.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, people disagree about that one. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Representative Diamantis.

REP. DIAMANTIS: Thank you. I wasn't going to speak at all today because I wanted to listen to all the arguments. Those who have been around, know where I voted in the past on this issue, but each year it becomes more and more confusing for me.

Part of that confusion comes about in the testimony that I hear because the testimony becomes confusing. We vacillate back and forth. And you did that to me a minute ago. I thought I was following you until I lost you when you talked about civil rights. And you stopped. You said you agreed with Senator Kissel that the issue of some of the matters are important, that people should not be discriminated against. The definition of marriage is in one of our statute books. It's not in our Bible, we, as the State of Connecticut. The question becomes whether or not that definition in our statute, which one would argue would fall within the confines of the 14^th Amendment, within the words "civil rights" that you used time and time again.

The question becomes -- and if we change the definition of marriage to allow for same sex marriages to fall within the premises of civil rights, is it a civil rights argument? And does it violate the 14^th Amendment by not allowing people of same sex to marry, both within our U.S. Constitution and that in our State Constitution? Does it violate?

If you are suggesting that it is an issue of civil rights, that it's not an issue of public policy --

RABBI HECHT: No. I am suggesting that this is a religious issue, primarily and I don't waffle on that. It's a religious issue 100%. The whole concept of sexuality is a religious issue.

However, --

REP. DIAMANTIS: Then can you prevent, in your --

RABBI HECHT: Let me finish. But society is impacted by social policy.

Now, the founding fathers had a belief in a God. That's why we have inalienable rights. To have no belief in a higher being, there would be no inalienable rights. I wouldn't be sitting here. You wouldn't be sitting there. We'd be still talking to King George.

But there are certain points, certain points, my friend, that come to us from the collective wisdom of many generations that have worked and that are religious in origin and cultural in origin and so and so. I was speaking from a religious standpoint. I'm speaking as a private citizen. And I am saying, as a Rabbi who deals also with counseling and with children and with adults and with myself, no one is perfect. I have to tell you, that this is a very, very precipitous step that is being proposed and will cause incredible, incredible loosening of fairness in so many different areas that I am not able to share with you because you have the bell and you're not -- I'm even not able to envision.

So I am humble enough to say that I submit that what I call moral and the levels of morality that I hope to attain are found in the Bible, which is recognized by so many people in this world today.

REP. DIAMANTIS: But I still need to ask you the question and the bell doesn't matter now because if you get asked questions, the bell doesn't count anymore. You could actually be here for three or four hours before we're done.

SEN. MCDONALD: Maybe not that long.

REP. DIAMANTIS: The question becomes on inalienable rights. Are people of same sex not afforded inalienable rights or should not they be afforded inalienable rights?

RABBI HECHT: How about life itself?

REP. DIAMANTIS: How about answering the question?

RABBI HECHT: It's a gift. These are all gifts that the human being has and it is bequeathed, but part of that gift is also to act responsibly and part of that gift is that society must be a just society. The laws of sexual proper conduct are part of the court system or the Legislature. You have a responsibility. Whether you feel comfortable with it or not, that's the burden or the responsibility or privilege that has been placed upon your shoulders, my shoulders, all of our shoulders.

REP. DIAMANTIS: And I have no problems with that burden, as I've done time and time again, but now I'm going to go back to Representative Chairman Lawlor's question. By acting responsibly, did the Legislature act irresponsibly by allowing for interracial marriages, in your opinion?

RABBI HECHT: No. In my opinion, personal?

REP. DIAMANTIS: Personal.

RABBI HECHT: Or religiously?

REP. DIAMANTIS: The group you represent. You're not here as a person, you're here as representing an organization.

RABBI HECHT: In my religion, there is no prohibition whatsoever. A human being is a human being. All of us are created in the image of God.

REP. DIAMANTIS: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

REP. DIAMANTIS: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Any other questions? Thank you very much, Rabbi.

Next is Dr. Kirsten Dahl followed by Father Robert Washabaugh. I'm sorry, Washabaugh. And then by Anne Stanback.

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: Good afternoon. It's a privilege to be invited here to speak today. My name is Kirsten Dahl. I am in full-time private practice as a child, adolescent, and adult psychoanalyst in New Haven. I am an Associate Clinical Professor at the Yale University Child Study Center. I am a Past-President of the Western New England Society for Psychoanalysis as well as a Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.

I have been working with children and their families for thirty years.

Some of the topics about which I have written are: adolescent development, children's play, gender development, and the impact of divorce during adolescence.

My special areas of clinical expertise are young children and their families and adolescent development.

As all of you know, all the major national professional organizations dealing with the health and well being of children and their families support the extension of marriage of laws to same sex couples. In 1997, my professional organization, the American Psychoanalytic Association passed, by an overwhelming majority, a resolution in support of same sex marriage.

Similar resolutions have been passed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The reasoning behind these resolutions is clear and unequivocal. Children are most secure and develop best in a family unit recognized as legitimate and protected by the state. There is now a solid body of research and I gave you a bibliography of references documenting this, demonstrating that there is no significant social or psychological difference between children raised by homosexual parents and those raised by heterosexual parents.

Children raised by homosexual parents show no greater psychopathology than those raised in heterosexual families.

Sexual orientation of the parents does not determine sexual orientation of the child.

What does, however, have an impact on a child's development is living with parents who are unhappy, anxious, and experiencing negative social pressures. Research evidence is overwhelming on the negative impact on children of racial and ethnic discrimination against their parents.

Homosexual parents are excluded from and discriminated against by the larger society. They and their children suffer from the awareness that the larger society does not recognize or grant legal protection to the parental partnership.

However committed as individuals the parents are to their union, they know that their partnership is unprotected by the State in terms of inheritance, taxes, pension plans, family leave policies, and eligibility for public assistance and housing programs.

This exclusion from marriage stigmatizes homosexual parents and their children, causing unnecessary suffering and pain. For some adolescent children raised in a committed homosexual partnership, the pain and suffering is intense.

SEN. MCDONALD: Dr. Dahl, could you wrap up your testimony, please?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: Yes, I will. In adolescence, as most parents are only too keenly aware, it is developmentally appropriate for the adolescent to criticize and even temporarily reject the well loved parents in the struggle to become psychologically separate. This is a crucial part of the movement to young adulthood.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions? Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Have there been any studies or is there any information that would support the concept that while there may not be a specific detriment to a child being raised in a same sex environment, that there is a benefit, maybe through viewing two different role models or having a wider, a more diverse parental unit? We, in this state, always talk about diversity. Diversity man and woman, that's more diverse than man and man or woman and woman. Is there any benefit in looking as, perhaps, an ideal not to disparage another situation, but is there any psychological benefit to a child raised in an environment where there is a man and a woman?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: There's no research that demonstrates the point that you are making. What research does show is that children raised in stable committed families do better.

SEN. KISSEL: Well I guess that begs the question --

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: It doesn't beg the question. There just isn't any research about whether there are heterosexual families do better than other kinds of -- than homosexual families and the evidence is that there isn't a difference in the long term on children.

SEN. KISSEL: So it's the majority opinion of people in the field of psychology that there's absolutely no benefit to a child being raised by a family where there is a man and a woman? That really has nothing to do with sexuality or role models. It only has to do with the stability of the family? The stability of the parental unit, whatever that may be?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: I think there are many factors involved, but I think the sex of the parents is not as significant as the other factors.

SEN. KISSEL: Now, that's different. When you said, "as significant", I asked if there was any benefit whatsoever because we're looking at public policy and a direction that the State should go.

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: Right. I just don't know --

SEN. KISSEL: Is there any significance at all to a child being raised in a family unit where there is a male and a female?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: I don't know of any research that has explored the question that you are asking. I mean, there certainly are differences for children raised in different kinds of families and that's important, but I don't think the question of whether a male and a female are raising the child has been studied in the way that you are asking me whether it has.

SEN. KISSEL: I appreciate your testimony and your patience in being here. I am just incredulous that of all the research that is conducted in these United States, that no one would have researched whether there's any benefit to a child being raised in an environment where there is a male and a female. If that's the case --

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: I think that the research is not -- just to clarify. I think the research has never focused on that issue. It has been the presumption in psychological research until very recently that the stable family unit is a heterosexual one. And that's been the presumption behind research.

The question of whether that fact of heterosexuality confers a particular kind of benefit has not been looked at in the way that you're asking.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Other questions? Representative Hamzy.

REP. HAMZY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to follow-up on a line of questioning that I initiated with Senator Prague in that it seems to me that we're called upon to make a policy decision with regard to what the scope of marriage will be and changing it from one woman and one man to, in this instance, members of the same gender.

Can you think of any reason why, if we're going to make this change, why there shouldn't be a change in all the restrictions that we now place on marriage?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: In our society, marriage has been assumed to be between two people.

REP. HAMZY: Well, it's been assumed to be between one man and one woman.

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: That's correct, but we have not --

SEN. MCDONALD: Dr. Dahl, could you speak into the microphone, please?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: We haven't, in our culture, defined marriage as one person with multiple partners.

REP. HAMZY: In many areas, if you're a Mormon, that is defined as a marriage between more than two people. Correct?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: That's correct.

REP. HAMZY: So if we --

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: Not in our country, though.

REP. HAMZY: Pardon me?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: They operate against the law in this country if they practice that old Mormonism.

REP. HAMZY: So what I'm asking you is, if we are to lift some of the restrictions as we're being asked to do, should we lift all the restrictions on marriage?

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: That's really beyond the scope of what I was asked to speak about. To be quite honest, I don't really have an opinion about whether, for example, a Mormon family, if it's solid and committed, some of the evidence is that they have problems. But those problems are probably not related to the formation of the family, but more what some people practice as Mormonism in a family of that sort.

REP. HAMZY: Well, the reason why I ask is because this issue has reached us now by way of other changes that we have made, co-parent adoption and other -- offering an extension of rights, contractual rights to people of the same gender. So I don't think it takes too much to anticipate that if we make this change, that there will be other changes that we'll be called upon to consider. And I'm just asking your opinion. Should we lift all the restrictions on marriage? In your opinion.

DR. E. KIRSTEN DAHL: I don't have an opinion on that subject.

REP. HAMZY: Okay. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is -- hopefully I'm not going to mess it up a third time. Father Washabaugh, followed by Anne Stanback, followed by Reverend John Rankin.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Well, yes you did, but that's okay.

SEN. MCDONALD: I apologize.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Thank you. I'd like to thank all the members of this committee for the opportunity to speak to you about the proposal to include same sex unions in the State of Connecticut's legal definition of marriage.

I come before you today recognizing that I am a contradiction. I also have a difficult last name, Washabaugh. I'm a Roman Catholic Priest of the Diocese of Norwich and the Pastor of St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church in New London. And I strongly support legal respect for gay and lesbian people and I deeply repent of prejudice displayed in our society in general and by members of my own church, both in the past and in the present, prejudice towards gays and lesbians.

Yet I am a contradiction because I come to express deep reservations about defining same sex unions as marriages. I also come to you as an anachronism because I speak the language of religion. This is not in vogue in the secular age, but it is more important than we suspect.

The type of discourse we naturally carry on in daily deliberations could be described as that of logic, reasoned thinking which tries to be clear, concrete, and focused on both rights and responsibilities.

On the other hand, the language of religion can sound out of place or out of fashion when placed next to this modern discourse and anachronistic. It's less clear not subject to demonstration or proof and concerned with questions that may not seem to have immediate importance at all.

The language of religion, the less popular is vitally important to everyone, even to people who profess no religious belief.

It's important because we have no other way to answer such vital questions as how do we define the human being?

I oppose the redefining of marriage to include same sex couples not out of prejudice towards gays or lesbians, but for the same reason I'm opposed to human cloning. In the case of cloning, by using technology to produce exact replicas of human beings, we thereby change our definition of the human beings. Humans become products of a manufacturing process. In the same way, a redefinition of marriage which excludes the possibility of reproduction through lovemaking, introduces a sub-surface shift, a sea change, if you will, in our self-definition, our religious, poetic, and mythic description of what the human being is.

Up to the present, the question, where do human beings come from receives the following answer. A man and a woman give themselves to one another in a total way, physically and emotionally, in the act of lovemaking. Thereby, they become parents. Human beings are the products of human love. This, of course, is not always the case and actual facts, acts of violence, of deceit, even self-deceit are often the beginnings of life.

Nonetheless, the normative description of where human beings come from is an act of lovemaking between husband and wife in the context of marriage. This belief, religious in a way, is to a great extent, the source of our conviction that we have transcendents, souls, if you will and that we're valuable, not in ourselves as ciphers or in ourselves, not as ciphers, not as disposable things or merely advanced organic thinking machines. Because we are the consequences of acts of love, we see ourselves differently, but if we lose the connection between deep human loving of man and woman and human reproduction, as one would by redefining family to include same sex unions, we subtly and I believe, unhappily, redefine the human being.

SEN. MCDONALD: Father, could you wrap up your testimony?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Yes. We ought to ensure that gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have legal protection necessary to live with human dignity, but we should also not make it possible for our brothers -- we should make it possible, not impossible, for our brothers and sisters to form sustaining relationships, but in so doing, we should not redefine an institution enormously important for other reasons, reasons barely noticed by human modern consciousness.

Thank you for this opportunity.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Father.

I just -- I think there's a certain amount of interest on the committee on this sort of middle ground and I think you sort of hinted at it, so I just wanted to focus in on that a little bit more.

You know, obviously there's a great deal of concern about the concept of redefining marriage and people have different points of view on that, but somewhere other than in that debate lies a different discussion about -- I think you just hinted at it, that is, is there a way to respect these relationships that gays and lesbians have, you know, these monogamous committed relationships? Is there a way to recognize those and respect them and provide the laws which really do nothing other than govern what happens under certain circumstances, in the event of a death or an illness or someone needs access to some records, whatever it happens to be? Because we've heard there are 588 of those laws on the books in Connecticut.

So, is there some middle ground that you think where we can respect these relationships, but not, in any way, undermine the institution of marriage? Can you give me some sense of what you think in that regard?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Well, I agree with you. That's exactly how I see it and that would be my hope, that without redefining things, we find a way to be a tolerant society, pure and simple.

Now, the details. The devil is always there.

REP. LAWLOR: Right.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: And that's where lawmakers do need to do a great deal of study and reflection and talk and deciding.

I really am not prepared to give you particular details on that, but I do suspect that many relationships which are also not marriage, could serve as a model and kind of a launching point for us, other kinds of family relationships or long term caring relationships which contribute marvelously to society could be looked at and we could ask the question, how do we surround those relationships with protection and support?

REP. LAWLOR: And I think that's very thoughtful and I appreciate that because I think that's really what we're struggling with this year and that is how to figure out that entity - whatever you're going to call it.

And I have another question. Since you seemed to focus in on it and I don't ask this question to be argumentative, it's a very sincere question. There is a focus on marriage as an institution, which has the ultimate goal of bringing forth children into the world. It seemed like that was kind of the focus of your remarks. Am I missing something there?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: It was mentioned a couple of witnesses ago that there's really a two-fold dimension to marriage, unitive, procreative. It's reproduction, but it's love. And the connecting of those two things actually -- as I was trying to say, define us in ways much deeper than what I think our human rights language tends to do.

We need to be very aware of that if in the name of human rights, which is very important to us, we somehow shift a deeper language which we have difficulty getting at and defining, then perhaps we're redefining ourselves in ways that we really won't notice until after it's happened.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, the reason I ask the question -- and I understand. There's that soul-mate phenomenon. That's love, right? You find your soul-mate. Right? That's the love between two persons.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: That's characterized as, one would hope, most, if not all, marriages. And then on the other hand is this procreation issue. And you said you add the two together and it's really --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: You add the two together. In the sense when I asked the question, how did I get here? I have to think back. fortunately, I am the result of a loving union between my mother and my father. In my mind, that's sort of a normative thing. That's something that we ought to say, that ought to be for all human beings as much as possible. But that's defined to me -- that's where I come from. I came from a mysterious act of love, not from a laboratory process. That is, in a sense, again a hard to express, but deeply religious sense of who I am, but there's no other way we can talk about who we are. As soon as we talk about that, we get into a language that sounds religious or mythic or poetic. And I think pragmatic society tends to dismiss it at our peril.

REP. LAWLOR: So is what you're saying is that marriage is the sum of two parts, the love, the soul-mate thing and the procreation thing?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: You bring those together, that's what defines marriage.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Even in our thinking, we separate the two, take them apart from each other, we diminish ourselves.

REP. LAWLOR: And so the reason I ask this, though, is does the Roman Catholic Church make a distinction between marriages entered into by people capable of procreating versus people, let's say, who might be in their 50's and 60's who seek marriage, even though it's obvious that procreation is not an option at that point? Does the church make a distinction between those two things because obviously that can't be the sum of --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Practically speaking, yes, of course. In terms of particular instances of people who, for whatever reason, should not or cannot have offspring are married because of the importance of that unitive part, that soul-mate part, but in terms of our thinking, which is different from particular instances, how we think about it, it's vitally important that we think about it as having those both dimensions.

REP. LAWLOR: I agree, but --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Because they define us.

REP. LAWLOR: The ceremony, the significance of the marriage is no different --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: No different.

REP. LAWLOR: And I guess that's the issue we're grappling with, is there a reason to make a distinction as a matter of public policy where you don't appear to make that distinction in the church.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Well, we certainly would and I believe that -- I think that it's a reasoned uncomfortable ness and unwillingness to go wholeheartedly with same sex couple marriage in my tradition because as it changes that definition. It adds an entire -- it shifts the whole question off of that double ground onto a single ground and that becomes part of the definition and for that reason.

REP. LAWLOR: It's interesting though, isn't it?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Well, when we start talking at that level, it opens the question, I believe.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Hi, Father. How are you?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Hello. Fine, thank you.

SEN. KISSEL: You know, it's interesting. You come and you've testified and you speak in terms of religion, but you actually have raised issues in my mind that are probably less religious than many of our other speakers and even those individuals that are not affiliated with any faith.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: I'd say religious, not sectarian.

SEN. KISSEL: When you raised the specter of cloning, I thought you raised a very interesting parallel because we really are at a time in our society where the concept of marriage seems to be splitting and we get the notion of procreation and that folks in a same sex relationship obviously would have to use some other source if they want to procreate. I mean, they could still be the parents, but there would have to be some other methodology of fertilization.

Likewise, in cloning, I can almost envision twenty years from now individuals -- I mean, if you ask people today, it's such a foreign notion to us that most people are probably opposed to cloning. But twenty years from now, as technology runs apace, if someone says, you know, I really want to clone myself, I could use the cells for some sort of disease or something else or there's some rationale for that, and so the whole idea of procreation would have gone along a different track such that no other individuals need to be involved in that situation. So a very unique period of time.

My question to you is, if you take away the procreation aspect, we sort of get bogged down on that and I always hearken back to the fact that a man and a woman, they can get together, never consummate that relationship physically and yet we still respect it as a marriage. They can make a conscious decision not to procreate.

So we set that aside. And so what is the problem and there is some sort of gut feeling that we're going down a slippery slope, but what would be your concerns if we, as a Legislature, passed a law allowing same sex marriages? What risk do we run ourselves if we go down that path? And again, I'm approaching it and some previous speakers have said that I'm concerned about civil rights and I guess the better way to characterize it is, I definitely abhor people picking on other people because of their lifestyles. So that whole hate crimes legislation is to expand it so that nobody gets attacked or hurt because of a lifestyle choice they make.

But I'm viewing this issue as a matter of public policy. What do we hold up as a laudable goal? And if we take away the procreation issue, which we're going to bump into on the cloning side twenty years from now, I'm sure, what is the danger? Why should we not support those proponents of same sex marriage?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: I had two thoughts in my head and let me respond to yours, though.

In terms of the infertile couple or the couple who, for whatever reason, is not going to engage in reproduction, that is seen as an exception.

If we take a whole -- in a legal definition, take a whole class of people and make that part of our definition, we are redefining. And I think that twenty years from now as we look ahead to improved cloning technology and increased temptation of utilizing it, we're going to confront a whole mess of moral, ethical, religious, social problems, which may redefine us and we need to be --

SEN. KISSEL: Well, let's set aside cloning for now and as far as I'm concerned, we have that --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: They are related, though.

SEN. KISSEL: -- I don't want to say a mess, but we have a moral and philosophical and religious issues before us right now. And my specific question is, what is the public policy reason for not extending the rights of marriage to same sex couples?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Because the rights of marriage, just to be more precise about your question with regard to the rights of marriage, I think we should surround sex marriages, same sex couples with legal protections that allow those couples to live peacefully.

SEN. KISSEL: But you understand there are --

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: And however, I --

SEN. KISSEL: -- and if it goes by any other name, why not just call it a (inaudible-microphone not on)

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: You're changing the definition of marriage when you make the same sex couple part of that definition by definition. And it's that by definition that really does change the way all of us think about marriage. And the way all of us think about marriage would come to be is quite a different thing from reproduction.

That opens the door for us to think about reproduction, apart from the human business of lovemaking. And that causes us to begin to think of ourselves increasingly as manufactured products and as very highly sophisticated mechanisms.

SEN. KISSEL: I understand that.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: We've always thought of ourselves as more than that.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you very much. I understand that argument.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Thank you.

SEN. KISSEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. MCDONALD: Before we go on, may I just remind members of the committee that we have an awful lot of people who are signed up who are waiting very patiently to testify. And if my math is correct, if we move just at three minutes for every person, we would be here for almost four more hours. That's assuming no questions.

So if members would keep that in mind when deciding whether they need to formulate questions and whether we're going to break any new ground, I would appreciate it.

Having said that, Representative Spallone.

REP. SPALLONE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I have been quietly over here throughout the afternoon and have been mindful of your strictures. I understand that.

This has been an interesting colloquy and I just wanted to carry it one final step further. And you have answered it in an other way. I think we all agree, sir, that words are very important in this building. That's why we have scores of statutes and each of those words means something very important.

And it appears to many people in the room that the word "marriage" is a very important word in this context, in this debate.

Am I to infer from your testimony at all that you are -- you have an open mind, at least, towards the concept of civil unions as opposed to same sex marriage, using that word?

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: I haven't studied it enough to know exactly what the legal consequences and meaning of civil union is, but I think you're right in the sense that I believe that same sex relationships should be honored with legal props that allow people to live in their unions without prejudice.

REP. SPALLONE: Thank you very much for your candid responses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Seeing no other questions, thank you, Father.

FATHER ROBERT WASHABAUGH: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Anne Stanback, followed by Reverend Rankin, and then Pam Perry.

And by the way, we're going to be a little bit more -- I apologize, but we're going to be a little more rigorous about the three minute rule than I have been to date.

ANNE STANBACK: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, and members of the committee.

My name is Anne Stanback and I'm the President of Love Makes a Family, a statewide coalition of organizations and individuals whose mission to expand Connecticut's marriage laws to include same sex couples.

As legislators you have heard and you will continue to hear many arguments about why same sex couples should be allowed to marry. For some of you, the legal arguments of equal protection will be persuasive. For others, you will be moved by the testimony of child development experts who explain that letting same sex parents marry is in the best interest of their children. But what will probably resonate with nearly all of you and what I believe will ultimately win the day, are simple stories.

Two months ago, Love Makes a Family began collecting such stories and this book, which each of you should have received a copy of, contains over 300 of them. These stories or testimonies are diverse in every way. They are from individuals and from couples. They are from people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual. They are from Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants. They are from parents who want their gay child to have the same societal recognition and legal rights available to their other children.

They are from religious leaders who honor love and commitment in all its human forms. And they are from married couples who say very clearly that allowing same sex couples to marry will not weaken their own marriages, but rather will strengthen the institution of marriage as a whole and extend basic fairness to all Connecticut citizens.

Some of the stories in this book involve tragedies where being married would have made a difference in terms of a partner's or family's economic security and well being. But many simply give a window into the day-to-day lives of same sex couples and their families allowing you to see them in all their ordinariness and uniqueness. They express the love as well as the commitment and patience and sacrifice and hard work that it takes to make a family.

And they also express their desire to be treated fairly and to have their families viewed under their own state's laws as equal, not inferior or second class.

You simply cannot read through this collection and miss the fact that these couples are married in every sense of the word except for one. These marriages are not legally recognized.

Your support of H.B. 6389, the bill expanding marriage laws to include same sex couples would remedy that.

We hope that all of you -- I know it's a thick book, but take time to read through many of these stories and I think that if you do, that you may begin to see this issue with new eyes.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. I think you're one of the first to beat the bell. We like to encourage that. Any questions?

ANNE STANBACK: Could I just throw out one thing because I don't think Senator Kissel's going to ask me this question.

SEN. KISSEL: I've been asked to sort of quiet down a little bit.

ANNE STANBACK: You don't think that was directed at you, do you?

You know, I understand your struggle about change and the slippery slope and I think that what's important to note and I think Representative Lawlor said this, is that we have heard those same arguments about where do you draw the line in all the other changes that have happened within the history of marriage and whether it's allowing married couples to legally use contraception. We heard virtually those same arguments, certainly in the interracial marriage issue.

When women, married women began to be given legal rights within marriage, being able to own their own property, write a will, write a contract, we heard this will lead to polygamy and we sort of can't imagine that now, but I think that change is difficult and change is scary and it's not necessarily a slippery slope down, but maybe it's trudging ever up the mountains of further civil rights.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

ANNE STANBACK: So I just put that out for you. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Please refrain from showing your support.

Reverend Rankin, followed by Pam Perry, followed by Brian Brown.

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Hello. I'm Reverend Eric Thompson. I switched places with the Reverend a little bit earlier. So I'm the second half of the --

SEN. MCDONALD: If people are requesting that that be done, I would ask you to show us the courtesy of letting our clerk know beforehand.

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: I do apologize.

SEN. MCDONALD: Please proceed. I'm sorry, what's your name?

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Reverend Eric Thompson.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Good afternoon, my esteemed colleagues. I am the Reverend Eric A. Thompson, Sr. of the Wayfaring Ministries of Greater Hartford, Incorporated, a non-denominational Christian organization focused on family revitalization through God's revealed scriptures.

I'm here today in full support of DOMA legislation. I believe that all human beings should be treated with compassion, love and dignity. However, I am here to affirm my democratic right to oppose any legislation relating to or including civil unions or same sex marriage.

Marriage is not an American or even a Connecticut invention. It has existed as an institution since the beginning of civilization and thus supercedes our modern laws. It has been said that recognition in some aspect for same sex unions is inevitable because of contemporary ideologies. Numbers have been used to show a seeming shift of balance of support for same sex unions.

The Roman Catholic Church has been fragmented to represent the State's Christian viewpoint. However, I must submit to this governing body that your constituency rides the religious spectrum within this state to which I also represent.

It's not just Catholics, it is Protestants, even Angelical, Jewish and Islamic groups unified with the same position.

Marriage in its present form needs to be protected because of the onslaught, not against anyone who is married, but to the very defining principles that our founding fathers held dear. This State's motto, "Qui Transtulit Sustinet" (inaudible-tape switched sides-some testimony not recorded) in the Bible showing the poise of them who held scriptures dear in relation to a governing body in England who wanted everything to become civil.

Thirty-six states within this great country have responsibly passed DOMA legislation protecting the fundamental integrity of the institution of marriage, establishing a moral foothold to which direction the governing body of those respective states show poise and integrity.

Over 70,000 in this state have spoken and many more will. As Senator Win Smith wrote in his commentary in yesterday's Hartford Courant, "Elected officials should pay some heed to the wishes of the electorate."

Thank you for your time and I pray and believe you will do the right thing.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Thank you. Any questions? Representative Hamzy.

REP. HAMZY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I hesitate to ask you this question, but the argument has been made that similar arguments were made when there was an expansion of the definition of marriage proposed with regard to interracial couples.

How do you make the argument against the expansion of marriage in this regard as opposed to the arguments that were made -- I don't mean to put you on the spot, but with regard to arguments that were raised earlier against the expansion of interracial marriages?

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Well, Representative, I don't have a problem with you putting me on the spot, that's why I'm here today.

First of all, I have to respond to your question by asking the question, the whole issue with the interracial marriage, was it with two males and two females or was it based upon the integrity of one male and one female?

REP. HAMZY: I believe that's the way I would differentiate it.

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Right. I understand. I don't think there's any comparison to interracial relationships and the problems that they had back then in comparison to now and I think any comparison would be actually undermining the intelligence of the people to which you administer over. So I can't actually complete that question because it's leading.

REP. HAMZY: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much.

REV. ERIC THOMPSON: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Pam Perry, followed by Brian Brown and then Michael Adams.

PAM PERRY: Chairman and members of the committee.

SEN. MCDONALD: Could you pull the microphone closer and speak up, please? Thank you.

PAM PERRY: Okay. Thank you for the time you've given us and my name is Pamela Perry. I'm a Westport resident. I've lived here in Connecticut for eleven years.

REP. LAWLOR: We can't hear you.

PAM PERRY: Okay. My name is Pam Perry. I'm a Westport resident and I have been for eleven years. My partner was Nancy Prince. We were together for fifteen years. Before moving to Connecticut, we lived in New York where we became domestic partners.

In January of 2000, Nancy was diagnosed with Leukemia and died the following August. And while losing Nancy was the worst thing that's ever happened to me, one of the other things that I came to understand during that process was how hard it was to come to understand that we were being treated differently than other couples strictly because we were a gay couple.

Nancy and I never thought of our marriage as being less legitimate than anybody else's. We never saw ourselves as less valuable citizens. We never thought we had less responsibility to each other or to our community or to our friends because we were gay.

And we never, ever saw ourselves as victims to discrimination. We worked jobs. We had strong family connections. We had lots of plans for the future. I don't think we lived a life that was much different than any other couple, be they straight or gay. We really thought we were equal.

And in many ways, Nancy and I were very fortunate. I really -- I can't think of really any person that discriminated against us throughout the process of her illness, not a doctor, not a nurse, not anybody. Everyone we came into contact with, every person we came into contact with respected us as a couple and then respected us -- they respected our marriage.

Yet, in the intensive care unit, the hospital policy was that I couldn't -- when Nancy was admitted to intensive care, the hospital policy stated that I wasn't part of her immediate family and I was denied admittance.

When Nancy died, I made her funeral arrangements and yet when it came to the end of it, as horrified as the funeral director was, he couldn't let me sign. We had to call her sister and her sister had to come back from New York City and she had to sign the papers.

I was denied the rights of inheritance that protect family members. I paid thousands of dollars in inheritance taxes that no couple, no married spouse has to do.

SEN. MCDONALD: Could you please wrap up your testimony? I'm sorry.

PAM PERRY: Okay. I just hope you'll consider remedying these discriminatory practices when you consider the marriage bill.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

PAM PERRY: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Brian Brown, followed by Michael Adams, and then Laurie Sullivan.

BRIAN BROWN: Mr. Chairman, Senator McDonald, ladies and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee that are here.

My name is Brian Brown, Executive Director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to encouraging and strengthening Connecticut's families, located right here in Hartford.

I am here today to publicly oppose any same sex marriage or civil union bills and to any compromise that would fundamentally undermine the institution of marriage. I am here today to support DOMA legislation.

There are many reasons to support DOMA legislation. First of all, the people of the State support it. The Family Institution began a petition drive last summer in which churches distributed petitions that clearly and unambiguously expressed their support for DOMA. This petition drive began in the State's Protestant and Jewish congregations and quickly drew thousands of signatures.

As this success grew, we worked in cooperation with the Knights of Columbus, the country's largest fraternal order and quickly gained the largest number of signatures of any petition drive in state history. Let me say again. The petitions that we delivered to each of your delegations and to the Governor represent the largest petition drive in state history. We now have over 90,000 signatures and the numbers continue to grow.

Love Makes a Family ran a poll last year, to much fanfare in which they claimed that Connecticut residents support their positions. This is simply not the case. Take a look at the poll. One thing should be obvious. Nowhere in that poll were respondents asked whether they believe in same sex marriage or civil unions. A poll on same sex marriage and civil unions that did not ask people if they supported either? Why? My only answer is that they knew they would have found the same thing that national polls have found and that our petition found, the people of the State do not support radically redefining our marriage law.

It is not the people alone who support DOMA. Some of the greatest legal minds of our time understand the necessity of protecting the institution of marriage.

Professor Robert George of Princeton University; Professor Maryann Glendon of Harvard Law School; Professor John Finnis of Oxford University all have lent their support to DOMA.

It is no wonder then that thirty-six states have passed DOMA statutes and that the federal government passed DOMA in 1996 by a margin of six to one, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The overwhelming support for DOMA and traditional marriage crosses party, ethnic, and racial lines. Why such support? Why such an adamant belief that the institution of marriage should be protected?

Those who wish to radically redefine marriage give us the answers. First, the name alone, Love Makes a Family. If this indeed were true, then why limit the institution to only two individuals? Why not three or four? Why not groups of individuals contracting together for the benefits of "civil marriage"? After all, love alone makes a marriage.

This is the crux of the issue. If marriage is not some thing, some definitive institution, then it is nothing. There is no principle by which you halt polygamy or other even more bizarre conglomerations. Marriage is indeed something. It is not simply a bundle of rights to be conferred by the State at will, to whomever has the loudest voice and the most press at any given time.

It is intrinsically the union of a man and a female. If it is not this, it is nothing. The reason that all major world religions, thousands of years of human history, a great body of social science evidence, and the common sense of the average citizen support codifying which was once simple common sense is a fact that cannot be disputed.

Traditional marriage is in the best interest of children and society. In the words of one of the greatest social scientist --

SEN. MCDONALD: Mr. Brown, thank you.

BRIAN BROWN: Can I just sum up?

SEN. MCDONALD: Mr. Brown.

BRIAN BROWN: I was told I was going to get five minutes, that I would be up with the experts and I wasn't. And I talked to Chairman Lawlor.

SEN. MCDONALD: That's incorrect, sir.

REP. LAWLOR: Time out. When did you talk to me?

BRIAN BROWN: I called your office and they had said that you were going to have a panel.

REP. LAWLOR: You said you spoke to me. You said you spoke to me.

BRIAN BROWN: Last week to Chairman Lawlor's office.

REP. LAWLOR: Did you speak to me?

BRIAN BROWN: No. I spoke to Chairman Lawlor's office.

REP. LAWLOR: Alright.

BRIAN BROWN: And they said there was going to be a panel and I would have five minutes.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, I don't know who you talked to, but you just said you spoke to me.

BRIAN BROWN: I'll finish.

REP. LAWLOR: But I've got to ask you a question.

BRIAN BROWN: Okay.

REP. LAWLOR: Let me ask you a question. First of all, you said in the beginning of your testimony that you would not support any compromise which undermines the fundamental sense of marriage. And last year we had this discussion.

BRIAN BROWN: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: Is there a compromise that you can envision that wouldn't undermine the fundamental structure of marriage?

BRIAN BROWN: Anything that doesn't create a separate institution, that doesn't give the State's imprimatur upon a separate social form, something, for example, that would expand contractual arrangements. Those sorts of things don't deal with marriage explicitly. Those sorts of things aren't undermining marriage and therefore, on a case-by-case basis, we sought legislation, then yes. I mean, there is a chance to support those.

We're not against anyone's civil rights.

REP. LAWLOR: So something that didn't, in any way, allude to marriage?

BRIAN BROWN: No. Not -- I said no separate institutions. So civil unions -- if the DOMA was passed, which we support, civil unions wouldn't be accepted either. So, of course, I don't support civil unions.

REP. LAWLOR: I understand that. I understand that. But California, for example, has a partnership law which says that if you meet certain criteria, which are different than what you need to meet to get married, then you could register with the State and once you've done that, certain rules apply to those relationships.

Is that something that you could support?

BRIAN BROWN: No, we would not support those either because --

REP. LAWLOR: And why is that?

BRIAN BROWN: Because it creates a counterfeit institution and that isn't the end of all of this. The end of all of this is to have civil unions in this state or same sex marriage and what has happened in Vermont, in which two-thirds of the civil unions contracted in Vermont are from out of state, people go back to their states, attack those state laws by going through the courts and seek to overturn them.

REP. LAWLOR: So there's really nothing in particular that you would support that would provide some benefits or some rules or some regulations to same sex relationships?

BRIAN BROWN: By in large, those things exist through having a simple will, a health care conservator document. There are a number of different documents that you can sign your name to and take care of these sorts of things.

Now, there might be areas in which simple contractual arrangements, as they currently stand, don't take care of everything. You could look at those on a case-by-case basis, but we oppose any legislation that would seek to create separate structures for marriage, an imitation of marriage, and undermine marriage. That's what we oppose.

REP. LAWLOR: Now, I want to ask you a different question. You made extensive reference to public opinion polls.

BRIAN BROWN: Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: Okay. Would you concede that over the last five or ten years, that the numbers have changed and when people are asked nationwide or state-by-state civil union, same sex marriage, would you concede those numbers are changing?

BRIAN BROWN: The last (inaudible) poll I'm aware of still said 70% of the people support traditional marriage. The numbers have wavered between 70 and 80 percent. So, I don't see any significant change.

REP. LAWLOR: How about on civil union? Do you notice a change in the question - in the responses on those questions?

BRIAN BROWN: Again, the last (inaudible) poll, there is more support for civil unions, but that's simply because I think people don't understand really what's at stake.

REP. LAWLOR: Alright. And have you read the polls, have you looked at the cross tabs? You seem like the kind of guy that would look at the cross tabs. Have you looked at the cross tabs about how opinion changes based on age and did you notice that people under the age of 35, in effect, overwhelming support civil unions?

BRIAN BROWN: We have a lot of work to do with the youth.

REP. LAWLOR: I understand. I just wanted to -- since you're basing your remarks on public opinion, I'm just observing that there's -- it's a little bit more complicated than you seem to --

BRIAN BROWN: There are different demographics, but if we look overall, generally 70% support traditional marriage.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, I support traditional marriage. I think it's a good thing.

BRIAN BROWN: It's in the best interest of society. It's in the best --

REP. LAWLOR: No question about it.

BRIAN BROWN: -- of our children.

REP. LAWLOR: It's a great thing.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

BRIAN BROWN: Further questions?

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Representative Farr. You're not quite done yet, Mr. Brown.

REP. FARR: Just I'm a little concerned about -- you said that you don't support a separate institution and that somehow that's an attack on marriage. I just wonder if you could tell me why that's an attack on the institution of marriage.

BRIAN BROWN: Because civil unions are basically an attempt to get "the rights of marriage" or imagined marriage in such a way that marriage simply is a bundle of rights to be conferred by the State at will.

That isn't the case. Marriage is not that thing that you're referring to. Marriage is a union of a male and female.

Now, what's happened is, there's an attempt to get civil unions because before marriage they basically couldn't get it up in Vermont. Now, the Supreme Court forced a remedy. It forced the Legislature's hands. Your hand isn't being forced here. Even with that, many of the people, if not most of the republicans were actually voted out because of that. But even apart from any of that, the reason civil unions were gotten is because it was a compromise, but initially most of the press on the other side was saying that this will be -- we'll be able to export this. We'll be able to export this and what I mean by that is that we'll be able to contract civil unions in Vermont, go to Georgia, file -- basically a suit saying that the Georgia laws aren't recognizing my civil union and by that, it means we'll overturn Georgia's DOMA.

Also, the attempt has been made to do that on a federal DOMA.

REP. FARR: Okay, but go back for a second. You know, what mystifies me in the whole debate here is that I hear both sides saying they don't want a separate institution and it kind of mystifies me that the opponents and proponents both agree that they don't want something separate and it's kind of maybe you've got something in common. I'm not sure why.

BRIAN BROWN: Where's Anne Stanback? The last time we debated, we agreed on the same thing.

REP. FARR: And it always mystifies when two opposing groups can agree on something which seemed as a reasonable approach for both of them and yet they both agree that they don't want to do that.

BRIAN BROWN: It's not reasonable. If we look at what's been written on this from the people who want to radically redefine marriage, again and again, civil unions is looked at as a Trojan Horse. I'm not saying that. Look at the writings. It's looked as a means by which you can overturn state DOMA and overturn the federal DOMA. I mean, that's what's at stake here. What you decide on here, what the Judiciary decides on will have far reaching affects, not only for Connecticut, but for other states. If you did pass a same sex marriage bill, people would come from other states, contract same sex marriage, go back to their states, fight against those state laws, and one by one, overturn each state's laws and possibly overturn the federal DOMA.

REP. FARR: Okay, but if we pass the bill recognizing Vermont's civil union, then what attack could be done on marriage laws in Connecticut?

BRIAN BROWN: Well, first of all, I think that there might be some more force to the argument if it wasn't forced by a court. If the Legislature decided to have civil unions without being forced by a court, that might be brought up in the arguments in other states.

It's also two states, it's just not one. Right now, Vermont is sort of the lone state. If you have another state with civil unions, you can say, well now there are two states, we're going to make the full faith and credit argument. We're not going to base it on one rogue state anymore. We're going to say two states now have civil unions and therefore, we need to take those laws into full faith and credit.

I mean, you're all aware, the full faith and credit clause is at stake here. That's what's used in the arguments.

REP. FARR: But wouldn't the full faith and credit only grant Connecticut a recognition of civil unions and not a marriage?

BRIAN BROWN: I've seen the courts do much crazier things than look at this civil union law and say well because Connecticut grants civil unions and because Vermont grants civil unions, that's a compelling reason for, say, New York or New Jersey to also accept those civil unions and therefore the whole history of those states' marriage laws are out the door.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Mr. Brown. Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: Just very briefly. It's not a question. I just wanted to make sure because this is being televised and it will be aired at another time and I really have the utmost respect for the way our co-chairs have handled it today and your statement you were promised time.

This hearing this year is different than in past years. There were no panel of experts, for those who may have missed the beginning of this. It was an hour, just like any other public hearing dedicated to public officials and then everybody else, then the public at large were called in the order of their signing and above and beyond that, our co-chairs made sure that pros and cons on this issue were called one after the other.

So, the utmost fairness was put into this for everybody.

BRIAN BROWN: I'm not blaming -- last week I spoke -- and I was told it was going to be a panel.

SEN. KISSEL: There were no - if you were here at 12:00 you would realize there were absolutely no panels.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. We had a streak of one. So let's see if we can -- okay, Michael Adams is next, followed by Laurie Sullivan and then Priscilla Newell.

MICHAEL ADAMS: Good afternoon. My name is Michael Adams and I'm an attorney with LAMBDA Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national organization that works for full equality for gay people.

At the outset, I guess I should say I wish the law were anything like what our proceeding witness suggested, but it is not.

Today one of Land of Legal's lawyers is standing in a courtroom talking to a jury about a tragedy that would never would have happened if lesbian and gay couples had the right to marry.

I want to share the story of our clients with you, Bill Flanigan and Bobby Daniel, because it illustrates in compelling and painful ways the injustice of excluding same sex couples from marriage.

Bill and Bobby were life partners who lived in San Francisco. Bobby had AIDS and his health was starting to decline. He wanted to visit his family on the east coast, so Bill and Bobby decided to do a cross-country drive, something they had always wanted to do together.

Unfortunately, Bobby became very ill while the couple was driving through Maryland. When it became apparent how serious the situation was, they decided to go to a local hospital. Bobby was admitted to the emergency room, but when Bill asked to be allowed in to consult with the doctors about Bobby's treatment, and to be with Bobby during these difficult moments, his relationship to Bobby was ignored because the hospital did not consider Bill to be a member of Bobby's family because Bill and Bobby were not married.

For the next few hours, Bill sat alone in the waiting room while Bobby was surrounded by doctors, but kept from his life partner. Bill repeatedly tried to convince hospital personnel to allow him into see Bobby and was repeatedly spurned because he was not family.

During the hours he waited, he watched family after family arrive and immediately be whisked in to be with their loved ones. But it was only after Bobby's mother and sister arrived from out-of-town and demanded that Bill be allowed to see Bobby, that he was finally permitted to be at his partner's side. Unfortunately, by then it was too late. Bobby was no longer conscious and his eyes were tapped shut. He died two days later without ever regaining consciousness.

Bill and Bobby were never able to say goodbye to each other and Bobby spent the last waking hours of his life without the person he loved most.

When Land of Legal filed a suit, a lawsuit on Bill and Bobby's behalf, Bobby's mother spoke out in support of the couple. I want to read a few of her words because they are so eloquent.

Grace Daniels said, "Like all parents who watch their children go out into the world, one of the happiest parts of my life was to know that Bobby found someone to love, someone who loved and cared for him. Through all of Bobby's health problems, Bill was always there for Bobby, always. Bill and Bobby were soul-mates and one of the best couples I've known. If that isn't family, then something is very wrong. My son, Bobby not only suffered in his final hours, he suffered alone. He was denied the love and comfort of the person he loved the most, Bill.

The pain of remembering how my son left this world is too terrible to wish on anyone."

Even if the jury that will decide Bill and Bobby's case reaches the right decision, they will never be able to give back what was taken from Bill and Bobby in that hospital that night, but we have the opportunity and the responsibility to make sure that no lesbian or gay couple in Connecticut ever is treated this way in a time of crisis.

You see, Bill and Bobby were not allowed to be married. We have talked here about whether civil unions or domestic partnership can achieve the same goal and the answer to that question is no, they are a step forward. Bill and Bobby were registered domestic partners. They had contracts, medical power of attorneys. I ask you do what is right and protect lesbian and gay couples by giving them the right to marry here in Connecticut.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? At the risk of breaking my own admonition, you are, Mr. Adams, the first attorney who has experience with this on a national basis, as far as I recall. So I have one very, hopefully, quick question.

What is -- legally, what is the qualitative difference between legislation that would allow for civil unions and allow for same sex marriages from a legal perspective in terms of the rights and responsibilities that would be afford to its recipients?

MICHAEL ADAMS: The difference is this. Every state in this country has a law that creates the marriage institution. Only one state in this country has a law that creates civil unions and that's the State of Vermont. What that means is that if Connecticut were to create a civil union option for lesbian and gay couples, that would provide rights and protections here in Connecticut, but were Connecticut couples to leave the State and go elsewhere, as Bill and Bobby did, chances are great that that civil union would provide them with no legal protection whatsoever.

On the other hand, creating and making available to lesbian and gay couples the right to marry provides protection all across this country because that is an institution that every state in this country recognizes.

SEN. MCDONALD: But under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, wouldn't that preempt a full faith and credit argument even if Connecticut were to adopt a same sex marriage law? Wouldn't that preempt a full faith and credit in any other state, based on the federal legislation?

MICHAEL ADAMS: No. The federal Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman for purposes of federal benefits and allows every state to take its own course in determining whether to respect same sex marriages or not. So it's up to each state to decide.

A number of states, as previous witnesses have indicated, have passed laws that indicate they would not respect same sex marriages. We believe those laws are clearly unconstitutional under the full faith and credit clause and would fall of challenge.

And then, of course, there are a number of states which have taken no such legislative action and so a same sex marriage entered into in Connecticut or any other state, would be respected in those states.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

REP. LAWLOR: Just a legal question?

SEN. MCDONALD: Sure.

REP. LAWLOR: The United States Supreme Court is currently considering a case involving the sodomy laws. It's the State of Texas, is that right?

MICHAEL ADAMS: That's right, yes.

REP. LAWLOR: And in that case, apparently two guys were arrested. The police, by mistake, entered their residence and they were having sex with one another and they were arrested under a Texas law that makes it a crime to have sex, I guess, if you're the same gender.

The legal question is, let's assume the Supreme Court overturns the Texas statute, which I guess everyone more or less assumes that they're going to. If they do that, would the rationale in that case necessarily be applicable to these issues that we're discussing since they would be involved sort of the special nature of a relationship and privacy and all these other issues? Is that going to be relevant to these deliberations?

MICHAEL ADAMS: I think the decision in that case would be relevant, although it doesn't fully decide the issue. It's relevant in the sense that what the State of Texas is arguing in that case is that Texas has the right to make sex between two people of the same gender a crime because same sex relationships are immoral. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of those two gentlemen, it will reject that argument and it will rule that states should not treat people differently based on notions about what kinds of adult consensual relationships are more moral than others. And certainly, that ruling would be applicable then to any discussions we would have either inside or outside the courtroom about what kinds of considerations make sense when it comes to deciding who should be allowed to marry.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Senator Kissel.

SEN. KISSEL: And again, I apologize too. Just a couple of quick legal questions.

One of the things stated by a previous speaker was that they were concerned that the push for same sex marriage is like a Trojan Horse. And that should Connecticut adopt it, there would be a national push to come in and engage and get married here in Connecticut and then march back to the other 49 states, 48 states if you take out Vermont, and challenge their statutes.

I mean, from your perspective and understanding this sort of national complexity of this, if we did pass a same sex marriage law, can you envision that people would actually utilize our law to then use it as a platform to challenge all the other states?

MICHAEL ADAMS: Well, it's hard to predict precisely the extent to which that would occur. There have been many lesbian and gay couples who have traveled to Vermont, for example, and have entered into civil unions. And to date there have been only a handful of couples who have gone back to their states and attempted to use their civil unions in order to challenge their own state's marriage law.

So the notion that a state enacting either civil union or same sex marriage is going to lead to some avalanche and national march, I think seems very overblown, given our experience in Vermont so far.

Having said that, my organization and the lesbian and gay community supports equal treatment for lesbian and gay couples. And so certainly, lesbian and gay couples seek to find the ways in which they can obtain equal treatment and legal protection. And so we certainly do expect that some couples might pursue such a path.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay. I have one other question. If, for whatever reason, one of the sovereign tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots or someone else like that, I mean, for so many issues, the laws that apply on those reservations are just special to them. If, for whatever reason, one of those tribes just decided that they were going to recognize same sex marriages, would that have any validity if anybody got married there and then went outside of those confines?

MICHAEL ADAMS: I have to say I don't know the answer to that question. That's getting into a legal area that I'm not familiar with.

SEN. KISSEL: Okay, thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Representative Farr.

REP. FARR: Sorry to keep you, but I have one quick question. You talked about taking the Vermont law and coming back and attacking the marriage laws of the state.

I don't understand what the attack of the marriage law -- if somebody brings a civil union from Vermont, in what way -- and comes back to Connecticut and seeks to enforce it, in what way are they attacking the marriage laws of the State of Connecticut?

MICHAEL ADAMS: Well, that certainly would not be my terminology. And I wouldn't say that they are attacking it.

In the handful of cases that we have seen where couples have entered into civil unions and then been involved in legal battles in their own states, I can give you a very quick example that I think might illustrate the point.

Land of Legal was involved in assisting a lesbian couple who entered into a civil union in Vermont. They were from Georgia. They were -- one of them was the mother of a child. She previously had been married. The child custody order that governed child visitation in her case said that she could not have her child -- have visitation with her child in her home when there was an unmarried adult staying overnight. And in that particular case, that woman took the position that because she had entered into a civil union in Vermont, she should be considered married under Georgia law. She lost that case.

But those are the examples. And again, there have been only a handful. I wouldn't call them attacks on marriage laws. What they are, are particular couples who need legal protections and are seeking to obtain them.

REP. FARR: Okay.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Laurie Sullivan, followed by Priscilla Newell, and then Pastor Lilly.

LAURIE SULLIVAN: Hi.

SEN. MCDONALD: Hi.

LAURIE SULLIVAN: Good afternoon. Okay. My name is Laurie Sullivan. I'm from West Hartford and I'm here regarding H.B. 5356 and I support H.B. 5356, the DOMA to keep the definition of marriage as it now stands.

So many have asked, why don't you separate religion from your view on marriage? And now that God is that center of my life, I turn to his viewpoint and let it direct me.

It is my personal belief that marriage was God's idea and it was intended to be a prototype, among other things because it is essentially a religious covenant with Him at the center. In it's purest form it's beyond redefinition.

One of my deepest concerns is for the safety and innocence of children and I have to laugh at the way I wrote this. When I wrote this out, I put as I watch t.v., media, porn sites on the web and I said no, no, that's not going to go over very well.

Between t.v., media, porn sites on the web and schools, I've watched our innocence go from our precious children and I cry at the burdens that their little shoulders have to carry.

Can redefining marriage protect them from the onslaught of onuses that threaten daily? Is it truly a balanced relationship when both partners bring to the table basically the same roles?

I am all for choice. If you choose to partner with someone of the same sex, then it's your choice with all of the responsibilities that choice brings. I cannot stand here and say that I agree, but I cannot deny free will. It comes from our Creator with love.

Standing here on this side of the debate has not come easy for me. Having lived as a lesbian for over fifteen years, the last thing that I wanted was to have the people that I loved so desperately accuse me of hate. And I've come to understand that disagreement is not hate, it's disagreement. And while there are those that really do hate, I cringe to be associated with anyone that really hates.

I, myself was in an emotional, spiritual vacuum for all my life before I met Christ. I was trying to suck the very life out of my partner's craving approval and love and when I met the author of love, I became whole for the first time in my life. How dare I say that my life as it stood wasn't perfectly acceptable and equally valid. I, for one wasn't whole. I was drinking, drugging, suicidal, and full of hate and (inaudible). I detested those that I ardently accused of hate.

Buried so very deep inside was the knowledge that something was missing. And my story, the fact that I have come to such a very different place is proof that there's hope and peace, healing joy and wholeness available to anyone that asks.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Priscilla Newell, followed by Pastor Lilly, and then Sandy Turner.

PRISCILLA NEWELL: Good afternoon.

SEN. MCDONALD: I'm sorry, only one of you is speaking?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, she's speaking for both of us.

PRISCILLA NEWELL: Is it okay if she sits here?

SEN. MCDONALD: Sure. Sure.

PRISCILLA NEWELL: Okay. Can you hear me?

SEN. MCDONALD: Yes.

PRISCILLA NEWELL: Okay. My name is Priscilla Newell and I'm from North Stonington. I'm a retired higher education professional. My life partner, Mary Wade is a practicing attorney.

I want to thank you all for your serious and fairness and patience, which you're approaching with the task before you. We're not clergy. We're not psychologists. We're not experts. We just happened to have moved here from Vermont.

We moved here after living there for thirty years and being partners for over twenty-five years. We moved here to be closer to our daughter who lives in New York City.

We have no intention of trying to take over the State of Connecticut. We have been a committed same gender relationship for twenty-five plus years, a commitment blessed by our religious faith, but not recognized by the State of Connecticut. A commitment that is strong as and with all the characteristics and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage. We have the same family values. We've raised a wonderful, healthy, happy daughter, worked hard to acquire and establish homes, first in Vermont and now in North Stonington.

Personally cared for my partner's mother in our own home during the last four years of her Alzheimer's stricken life, and carried the full responsibility for my sister who was debilitated by Parkinson's Disease.

We have taken our civic responsibilities seriously, serving on local boards, committees and addressed the needs of women, children, those with AIDS in our community in general.

In sickness and in health, for better of for worse has also been the foundation of our relationship just as it is for heterosexual couples. And in Vermont, we were blessed with the protection of a civil union, which, as you know, was established because the State Supreme Court decided that the law as it stood was a violation of civil rights.

Last August we moved to Connecticut and as the partner of an attorney who deals with family issues, I'm acutely aware of protections accorded legally married couples, but not same gender couples here.

While we've learned that a law passed last session provided some protection such as health care decisions, those protections are still not automatic as in heterosexual marriages. We know once again that we have to go through the legal hoops, documentation, and cost needed to protect us.

For a lot of years, people in this country tried to change attitudes about race, hoping the change in behavior would follow. It didn't. Not until the Civil Rights Act forced a change in behavior and then many attitudes began to change. We believe that you have the capacity to enforce a change in behavior that may, in the long run, not only change attitudes, but provide a fair and safe life for same gender couples in this state.

And by the way, my higher being that I believe in confirms that I am moral and I deserve equality. I also was raised in a small, very red-neck town in central Florida and I know all about equal -- separate, but not equal. And marriage is equal.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much.

PRISCILLA NEWELL: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Pastor Lilly, followed by Sandy Turner, and then Tom White.

PASTOR LILLY: Good afternoon, Judiciary Committee. It's a privilege and honor to take a few minutes of your time and to share my deep convictions with you as I represent one of the largest churches -- Protestant churches in the City of Waterbury.

Foundations cannot be removed without first taking down the building. If the foundation of this building was removed, this building would collapse. There is a foundation that has been laid in this nation that cannot be denied. This foundation is secure. This foundation is all over our Constitution, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial. It's all over our history books.

In George Washington's farewell address, there are three paragraphs expressly about Almighty God and you do not read about George Washington's farewell address in any public schools today. That speech has been removed. A great study to go back and read that. It's a powerful speech.

But regardless of what a small minority of people believe, God's truth is truth and God's truth is marching on today.

Our founding fathers built the United States on the truth of God's word. All of the laws of this land were taken out of the Old Testament, the Holy Bible. The three branches of government were taken out of the Book of Jeremiah. Tax exemption for churches was taken out of the Book of Israh. This was the foundation laid in the United States of America.

To move away from this foundation, is to destroy the very structure that this nation is built on. In St. Mathew's Gospel, Jesus Christ shared a great truth. I would like to read this truth to you now because it applies to us today.

It's about wise and foolish builders. "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice, is like a wise man who built his house on a rock and the rains came and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, but it did not fall because its foundation was on the rock.

Likewise, there was a man who built his house on sand. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them, is like a foolish man who builds on sand. The rains came and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash."

God, in the Book of Genesis created Adam and Eve. That is our mandate. That is our precedent.

In the story of creation, God created one man and one woman, not two men and not two women. To carnally construct the definition of marriage and put it in the law of our state would throw out the biblical foundation that has been laid in our nation since it was founded. We would start to build on sand when that law is passed. Same sex marriages, civil unions. When that law, if that law was ever passed, we would start to build on sand.

Let us not build on sand today, but the sure foundation. I urge all the Judiciary Committee to usher in the DOMA Act and to make Connecticut the thirty-seventh state in our nation to pass DOMA.

I urge all of the committee to take a stance for the preservation of the traditional biblical family, one man, one woman makes a family.

Let us declare what the 70,000 DOMA signatures, delivered to the Capitol Building on January 29^th that we want to preserve the foundation already laid.

May God bless you as you build on His word and pass the DOMA bill for unless the Lord builds the house. They that labor, labor in vain.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Pastor. The next speaker will be Sandy Turner, followed by Tom White and then Ken Bartschi.

SANDY TURNER: I think it's still good afternoon. Good afternoon, Chairman Lawlor, Chairman McDonald, and members of the Judiciary.

My name is Sandy Turner and I sit here together with my husband, John of thirty-five years.

We would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

When my daughter first told me she was gay, I was devastated. She had invited me to dinner and as always, I was enjoying our time together. I did not see this coming.

It was simply another mother/daughter evening out. I do remember managing to hold up my end of the conversation trying to be politically correct to say and do the right thing. Then I went home and I cried. I don't remember how long I cried, but it was for a very long time.

I cried in fear for her life and I cried for her well being, for she told me this only months after the horrific murder of the Shepherd boy in Wyoming.

I worried about her ability to gain and maintain employment in the discriminatory world. Selfishly I cried for the wedding that I believed I would never get to plan and the grandchildren that I believed that my husband and I may never get to have.

And then I realized that I was crying for me and not for her. For she was, in fact, the same exceptional child that we had raised, the very same competent woman that we had come to admire as an adult.

If she, in fact, had found happiness, who was I to judge?

In the months, years that have followed we have been truly blessed. Our daughter lives in the great State of Connecticut, the promises of safer and more compassionate way of life for its citizens. She has a wonderful position in a company that respects diversity. She has found a lifelong partner who is her perfect soul mate. They compliment each other very well. Could our daughter have found a more perfect heterosexual soul mate? We don't think so. And now they have bought their first home together.

What she doesn't have and what I failed to realize that night that I cried for her, are the 588 rights and responsibilities the State of Connecticut provides to married couples that are denied to gay and lesbian couples, including the right to marry.

We are here today to implore you to take the bold steps necessary to ensure equal rights in Connecticut truly means equal rights. To do this honestly and forthrightly, there can only be one standard, one set of laws that is applied equally to all Connecticut citizens.

Thank you for your consideration. We would be happy to answer any questions.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Do any members have any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Tom White, followed by Ken Bartschi and then Father Cronin.

TOM WHITE: Thank you for your patience and attentiveness.

My name is Tom White. I'm the Rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, South Windsor. (inaudible-tape switched sides-some testimony not recorded)

In the late 80's I began formal studies in homosexuality when I served on a church study commission. In my experience, by far and away, the average person in the pew and the average person in the street believes that sexual orientation, specifically homosexuality, is genetically caused and unchangeable.

For persons of faith, it is seen as God given. From that belief or personal experience, people reinterpret scripture and cultural standards. They then reason, it is unjust to deny certain civil rights to homosexual persons based on something they have no control over.

Several months ago, Representative Lawlor introduced the Office of Legislative Research team as dedicated and unbiased in they're assembling of data. I'm sure they were. However, there is a more basic issue. Did the team know about the accuracy and validity of the research itself?

For years I have read technical material in books and publications such as the Archives of General Psychology and the Journal of Science. Do I know whether or not the research is accurate or not? No. But consider the results of peer review.

In the early to mid 90's, the press champion, LeVay, Giorski, Hamer, Bailey and Pillard, as having found biological or genetic origins to homosexuality. Yet they were receiving failing grades with their colleagues in peer review.

Balaban, Bouchard, Byne, Ebers and Rice, King and McDonald, are researchers who either condemned the other's research or had contradictory research.

In 1973, Robert Spitzer was a pivotal force in convincing the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from its diagnostic and statistical manual.

In 2001, he released findings which came close to a reversal and raised questions about the origin of the work.

You can read some of the other material that I've written.

There are persons in the gay community who challenge the use of the genetic argument. A prominent lesbian in my denomination says, "what's wrong with choosing to be a lesbian or gay man? It's what we do, not what we are that's important."

But let's grant the genetic argument for a moment. Can we think of any behaviors that society should discourage? Where did America get the concept of heterosexual monogyomous marriage? From Christianity which is rooted in Judaism.

For example, in 1890, the federal government imposed the religious concept of monogamy on the territory of Utah to become a state.

Closing paragraph. I have used this testimony time to speak about one aspect of the debate over gay marriage. The nature of homosexuality and only part, at that.

Not only has the scientific community not proven genetic or biological causation for homosexuality, it appears to have lost interest in the search. Yet many in the public and perhaps the Legislature, still have old headlines embedded in their minds and hearts. It should not be the basis upon which motives are imputed or laws are written.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much.

TOM WHITE: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: The next speaker is Ken Bartschi, followed by Father Cronin and then Reverend Bob Lane.

KENNETH BARTSCHI: Good afternoon, Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor and by the way, thanks for pronouncing my name mostly correctly. It's Kenneth Bartschi.

I'm an attorney in private practice in Hartford and I'm an appellate lawyer, which means I prosecute and defend appeals. Many of the cases that I'm involved in involve also constitutional issues, statutory construction issues, and complicated procedural matters and I raise that as by way of background.

My written testimony addresses the constitutionality or rather the unconstitutionality of DOMA and it also addresses whether a marriage or a civil union recognized in Connecticut could be portable to other states or whether it would be recognized to other states.

Before I get to that, because you have that to rely on, I want to address a couple of points that were made earlier.

We've heard a lot of folks talk about the religious reasons or motivations for opposing extending marriage laws to include same sex couples and those people are certainly entitled to do so under the First Amendment to petition the government and to speak freely, but what I would remind this committee is that our State Constitution was first enacted in 1818 and there were three reasons for the Constitutional Convention that brought that about, one of which was to disestablish the congregational church as the official state religion and the result of that is Article 7^th of the State Constitution that says, "no preference shall be given by law to any religious society or denomination in the State."

And what that means is that you need to find secular objective rational basis to decide laws and that if you are deciding these laws essentially to support a particular religious viewpoint, you are acting against the Constitution of this state.

Now, turning to the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the full faith and credit clause of the federal constitution requires each state to recognize the judgments, acts, and records of other states. A Defense of Marriage Act essentially says well, we're not going to recognize a record from another state, namely the marriage license and I do not believe that this body has the authority to do that nor do I believe that Congress had the authority to enact the federal DOMA. I do not think that the framers of our Constitution intended to give Congress the power to eviscerate completely the power of the full faith and credit clause.

But aside from that, there's a state basis under the State Constitution, namely Article 1^st, Section 20, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. If Massachusetts or Indiana or New Jersey comes to recognize same sex marriage and a couple from Massachusetts comes to Connecticut, if they're a heterosexual couple, their marriage will be recognized as valid. If they are a same sex couple under DOMA, their marriage would not be recognized and the only difference between the two couples would be the sex of the parties. And I think that would violate Article 1^st, Section 20 of our Constitution and this body ought not to be in the business of passing unconstitutional legislation.

Now, much has been made about whether these marriages or civil unions would be recognized elsewhere. I just, to conclude, would say that I was the attorney who wrote the petition for certain, the Rosengarten case. I think the Supreme Court would have reversed, but the Rosengarten would not have answered the full question, at least as far as Connecticut law goes.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. And we do have your written testimony on those other issues. Thank you.

Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: It's an interesting concept about the original Constitution of the State under the new United States system, the 1818 Constitution. Let me ask you this.

During the time that the official state religion was the Congregational Church, did the State therefore not recognize marriages that weren't performed within the Congregational Church?

KENNETH BARTSCHI: I don't know -- I don't know whether that is so. When the Congregational Church was the state religion, what that meant is that you had to go to the Congregational Church and pay to support that church unless you were a member of a recognized dissenting sex such as the Baptist or the Episcopalians. And so it was -- the disestablishment was to get away from that and to allow people to practice whatever religion they so chose.

And I do not know the history specifically of whether Episcopal marriages would have been recognized. I imagine that they would have been, but I don't know that that's for certain.

REP. LAWLOR: It's interesting because I think the -- and I stand to be corrected on this one, but I think the Congregational Church is now known as the United Church of Christ. Is that right?

KENNETH BARTSCHI: Correct. Yes.

REP. LAWLOR: And actually it would be ironic because if that was still the official religion of the State of Connecticut, I think they have a very open and affirming policy toward this issue.

KENNETH BARTSCHI: Right. We maybe should have left things alone there, at least on this issue.

REP. LAWLOR: It might have solved this whole problem right there. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Father Cronin, followed by Reverend Bob Lane, and then Dot Boyle.

FATHER CRONIN: Good afternoon. I'll just take one or two points out of my notes here because so much of it has been said before.

We've heard a great deal of conversation today in terms of rights, but could one consider the possibility that that's only part of the track? We also have to discuss not only rights, but obligations and specifically the obligation of the State to promote the general welfare.

And it's clear from what's been said today and, in fact, I believe I could quote someone as having said there are 588 instances in Connecticut law where marriage is, in some way, enhanced. That means that this state has long judged that marriage, as traditionally defined, is so basic a building block of society that it is within the best interest of the states to promote marriage as traditionally understood. And in making that judgment, the State does not make a derogatory statement about people who are single, people who are divorced, people who are widows, people who are widowers. It makes no derogatory statements about those who might choose not to marry because they would be homosexual or lesbian. No rights are being denied. It's simply a case that the General Assembly, in promoting the general welfare, has chosen to promote marriage as it is traditionally defined.

The second point and this would be looking forward, if same sex marriage is legalized, what about two elderly sisters who were both widows? They decide to pool their resources and thus reduce expenses and they, rather profoundly, love one another, but they are both heterosexual. And continue the scenario. Next door live two women who are lesbians. Now why should these two heterosexual sisters be denied benefits that might be enacted in same sex legislation? Is heterosexuality deemed to be a curse or a burden in the State of Connecticut? And would Connecticut law then demand that these two ladies, to achieve such benefits if they were there, would have to, in some way, fake a same sex marriage?

A troubling question. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: It's interesting you mention that because, you know, under the California law, which is one of the options available to us, they have -- partners can register and then that keys them into certain rules that are normally reserved for married couples.

But the criteria in California has nothing to do with your sexuality. It simply says if you share a household and you have a -- you agree -- I think it's you agree to financially support the other person, then you qualify to be keyed into these rules so that it doesn't really get into what your sexuality is. It actually envisions the situation you were talking about, two people who are dependent upon one another, who share a household, they could certainly register because there's no litmus test about what your sexuality is.

So would that change your view on this whole thing?

FATHER CRONIN: Well, certainly. I mean, you're talking about -- today, we're discussing DOMA.

REP. LAWLOR: Yes.

FATHER CRONIN: Same sex marriage and civil unions.

REP. LAWLOR: Right.

FATHER CRONIN: There are only three options and perhaps we do need a fourth that we could look at.

REP. LAWLOR: But the civil union one is essentially the same thing. Even in Vermont, it doesn't require that you have some sort of sexual relationship. It just requires that you, in effect, want to be bound by these rules that in Vermont govern civil unions. It's not denied to heterosexual people -- I mean, however you could do it. In just the same way as two people don't love each other, can get married. I mean, there's no test.

So, I just want to point that out for the record that if two people wanted to take advantage of these rules, they would certainly have that option. They wouldn't be prohibited, either under this bill or the California style law.

FATHER CRONIN: But yet the civil law, as proposed here, is not the same as the one you are speaking of in terms of California, though, is it?

REP. LAWLOR: But even under the civil union law, you can do the same thing. I was just saying that in California, it is another option, but even in Vermont, two persons who were not homosexual, could certainly get a civil union. They're not prohibited. There's no test you have to take in terms of your sexuality to enter into the union. It just keys you into those rules.

So if you wanted to do it, you could certainly do it.

FATHER CRONIN: Then perhaps what we might need then is a fourth option that we could look at carefully.

REP. LAWLOR: Sure.

FATHER CRONIN: Great.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Representative.

REP. CONWAY: It's a pleasure seeing you, Father.

FATHER CRONIN: Nice to see you.

REP. CONWAY: Thanks for coming today.

FATHER CRONIN: Age has no affect on you, whatsoever.

REP. CONWAY: Thank you, Father.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. The next speaker is Reverend Bob Lane, followed by Dot Boyle, and then Dr. Robert Zavoski.

ROBERT LANE: Good afternoon.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good afternoon.

ROBERT LANE: Or perhaps it's good evening. I'm Robert Lane, a retired United Church of Christ Minister now living in Windsor. I a opposed to the DOMA law and am speaking for the other two same sex marriage and civil union.

I've been an ordained minister for fifty years now. I served as Pastor of churches in Connecticut for thirty-three of those years. Now I'm retired and worship with the First Church in Windsor.

I also, for over fifty years, have enjoyed the benefits of a stable and fulfilling marriage and those benefits are considerable. When I pay my income tax, I file jointly with my wife, which gives us a substantial savings of money each year.

If I should die, my wife will have automatic rights to determine the funeral arrangements and to benefit under my social security account. When I went into the hospital last October, my wife accompanied me into the emergency room and spoke for me when I was unable to speak clearly.

No one questioned her right to speak for me because we were husband and wife.

When we go to church or social events, people expect to see both of us and if one is missing, where is the other one, is he okay?

On every hand, we receive support from the community for the stable marriage that we have enjoyed.

These are only a few of the benefits, financial and social which we enjoy as a married couple. My gay and lesbian friends and their partners are denied many of these same benefits for no other reason but the fact that they are homosexual and my wife and I are heterosexual.

Now, that's wrong. In my fifty years of ministry, I've officiated at over 700 marriages. I am well aware of how very much meaning that event has had in the lives of the people I married. It is not fair to deny some folks the benefit that our society gives to the rest of us simply because they happen to be homosexual.

The laws you enact, as a legislature, should above all be fair to all of us in the same way.

Connecticut's largest Christian denomination will not recognize same sex marriage, they equate it with sin. That's their business and they don't have to perform same sex marriages. My own denomination, the United Church of Christ, has welcomed same sex folks for over twenty-five years. However, the state law has no business favoring one church's view over that of another. My home church, like a number of others has entered into substantial study of sexual orientation. We've discovered that the bias against homosexuality is largely based on a misreading of scriptures. Our study of the scriptures, the opinion of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and much testimony of personal experience has convinced us that orientation is not a choice, but simply the way we were made by our God.

Therefore, we voted in 1994 to be an open and an affirming congregation welcoming all people without regard to sexual orientation.

You here are considering three bills having to do with marriage. I can see no reason why marriage, with all of its benefits, should be denied from couples who want to join in faithful and loving marriage relationships.

Therefore, first of all, in all fairness, I urge you to defeat the DOMA bill, H.B. 5356, which would deny to some couples the rights others can enjoy without question. It would do absolutely nothing to strengthen my marriage nor the marriage of anyone else I know, but it would be a real hardship on the couples of the same sex.

First of all, please defeat the DOMA bill. Then I ask you to pass the same sex marriage bill, H.B. 6389. While it would do no harm to other marriages, it certainly would greatly strengthen the position of committed couples to whom it would apply.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Dot Boyle, followed by Dr. Zavoski, and then Peter Wolfgang.

DOT BOYLE: My husband of 42 years, Terry and I are here in support of the Defense of Marriage Act bill.

First of all, I want to say, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor and committee, we're happy to be here today.

We're here because family life is being destroyed today and since marriage is the source of the family, marriage is, in fact, both an interpersonal and a social concern and it must be seen as an institution.

There can be no doubt that the physical relationship between a man and a woman is of decisive importance to the institution. However, outside that institutional framework, other sexual relationships do not constitute a marriage.

The normal consequence of the sexual relationship between a man and a woman is children. A child is a new member of society. The birth of a child turns the union of a man and a woman based on the sexual relationship into a family. The family is, in itself, a small society and is the original cell of social life.

It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life.

Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which from childhood one can learn ethical values and make good use of freedom.

The importance of the family for the life and well being of society entails a particular responsibility for the State to support marriage. The very existence of our state depends upon it.

Please vote for the Defense of Marriage Act, H.B. 5356 and help to strengthen the honorable institution of marriage in the State of Connecticut.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Mrs. Boyle. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Dr. Zavoski, followed by Peter Wolfgang, and then Anita Schepker. I'm sorry. Then actually Peter Wolfgang.

PETER WOLFGANG: Good afternoon. My name is Peter Wolfgang. I'm a District Deputy for the Connecticut Knights of Columbus. With 27,000 members in this state, the Knights of Columbus is the largest Catholic lay organization in Connecticut.

Last November, we joined with members of other faiths to organize the largest petition drive in our state's history. The result was 70,000 signatures by your Connecticut constituents asking you not to legalize same sex marriage or civil unions, but to instead enact a Defense of Marriage Act that would ensure the protection of the traditional one man/one woman definition of marriage.

That said, I want you to know that you have been mislead concerning who is driving the petition. It isn't the bishops or the clergy who came to us. It was hundreds of men like me who went to them, fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands who have a grave concern that marriage remain strong in Connecticut.

To protect it, we went into our communities last year and found thousands of people who felt the same way. So strong in their conviction, that they signed their names, addresses and e-mails to a petition and submitted them last month to the General Assembly.

The 70,000 signatures is only the beginning of opposition to same sex marriage in Connecticut. It has been said that last year's election proves there is no political price to be paid for supporting same sex marriage or civil unions. Don't believe it. Most people did not know that their legislators were tinkering with the fundamentals of marriage.

Last year, I talked to hundreds of men and women who signed the petition, a common theme was their disbelief. With all the media attention, they still didn't know this was happening in Hartford. The petition has begun to change that.

Secondly, Catholics have the same free speech rights as everyone else. Some say the church should stay out of this discussion, that this involves a civil matter and not religious. The implication is that Catholics have only a right to speak about church matters, not public affairs in general. That is anti-religious bigotry.

Indeed, I have heard a lot about hate in this debate and how wrong it is, but when I consider the slogans employed by some adversaries comparing the Knights of Columbus to the Klu-Klux Klan, accusing those who signed our petition of bigotry or equating the mere attempt to pass a Defense of Marriage Act with gay bashing, I have to tell you that the only hate I see is coming from those who favor gay marriage.

In closing, I am telling you not to be fooled by our adversaries' misrepresentation of public sentiment. The 70,000 signatures presented to you is just a small taste of the public opposition to the redefinition of marriage that is continuing to build.

I ask you not to legalize same sex marriage or civil unions and to honor our voices and our values by passing the Defense of Marriage Act.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you. Representative Lawlor.

REP. LAWLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Mr. Wolfgang. I just want to point out that I don't know about other people's districts, but in my district, three separate mailings were sent to everybody who is a registered voter in my town pointing out my views on this issue and I did win by a rather substantial margin. I don't think -- maybe it wasn't known elsewhere, but in my district people knew.

PETER WOLFGANG: It should be noted and I know that's part of the reason why you say there's no political price to be paid. What little political organizing that I know of that was done around this issue during the last election was haphazard and thrown together at the last minute. Believe me, next time it's going to be different.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, I'm sure, but nonetheless, there were three separate mailings that were sent to everybody in my district and it got extensive coverage on television elsewhere and you can't say that my constituents didn't know of my views on this topic.

PETER WOLFGANG: On the question of extensive coverage, I was on the phone with a lot of people in East Haven. This is one of the interesting things for me. I mean, I was one of the main organizers of this petition drive. I made hundreds of phone calls around the State and I had assumed -- I had been following this issue. It had been covered heavily in the media. And what I found was that -- I assumed everyone knew what I knew because I had been reading the newspapers, watching the news. And what I discovered is that our local media does not reach as many people as you think it would. Almost universally -- almost nobody knew this was going on. They were outraged when they heard of it and I've heard repeatedly that the other side is infuriated by the petition drive and I think I understand why, because what I'm discovering is that the churches reach a lot more people than the media does.

REP. LAWLOR: I'm not talking about the media. I'm talking about specific mailings, including a postcard like four or five days before election was sent to every registered voter in my district. So I don't know how they would claim that they didn't know about it.

PETER WOLFGANG: It was sent fairly quickly -- I mean, fairly close to the election. If they work on your district for a year before the election, things might be different.

REP. LAWLOR: Well, there were three mailings. The first one was sent out in March. And I think you can say a lot of things, but I think at least in my district, everybody was perfectly aware of my point of view on this. And, in fact, not many people have called to me to express concern about it.

PETER WOLFGANG: I don't know if that question necessarily hinges on a couple of postcards mailed from another town. I think the phone calls that we did about the petition drive in East Haven and elsewhere that alerted people is the beginning of a process that will make a difference, that will make you wish for the days of postcards.

REP. LAWLOR: Okay. Well, I'm only pointing out that people in my district are aware of my views on this topic and it didn't seem to make much of an impact. So, we'll see. I know East Haven very well. I don't think you do.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. And just as an observation, generally one advances one's cause better by offering reasoned analysis of the issues before you rather than oblique threats, sir.

PETER WOLFGANG: I think a lot of the speakers did offer -- did --

SEN. MCDONALD: No clapping, please.

PETER WOLFGANG: I think a lot speakers did offer reasoned explanations. I had three minutes. And my feeling was, no one is telling you what's really going on there with the political situation and you're elected officials. I think you ought to know. Does this effect your electoral (inaudible) in the future? It does. I don't think you've been served well by comments about how momentum is in the direction of same sex marriage. I've been out there. I've seen what's going on. It's completely the opposite and I think a lot of you are going to be surprised.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, sir.

PETER WOLFGANG: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: As a matter of fact, we are - I got ahead of myself. So, we're going to have to double up on two of the other people so that we stay balanced here.

The next speaker will be Anita Schepker, followed by Phil Devine. She's not -- Anita, I don't believe, is here. Phil Devine and his son, Andrew.

Always a pleasure to see folks who travel all the way from Stamford. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one.

PHIL DEVINE: Thank you. My name is Phil Devine. My partner, Ted Kowalski and our son, Andrew Kowalski-Devine live in Stamford.

We want to thank you for giving my family the opportunity to talk with you today. My partner and I will be celebrating the 25^th anniversary of our relationship together this May. We have been fortunate enough to be able to build a life together in spite of the multiple obstacles that are placed in the path of the same sex couples.

However, of all the opportunities we have had, the one we treasure the most is the opportunity to have and raise our son, Andrew, sixteen on February 17^th.

The Connecticut Legislature gave us a gift more than two years ago when it voted to allow second parent adoption. Ted adopted Andrew on January 30, 2001, giving Andrew a direct legal tie with multiple legal protections. Unfortunately, Ted and I, as a couple, have no such protections afforded by law and this could also negatively impact Andrew, should something happen to one of us in the future. And Andrew wants to speak to you from his perspective.

ANDREW KOWALSKI-DEVINE: My name is Andrew Kowalski-Devine and I am a sophomore at West Hill High School in Stamford.

I am the son of Philip Devine and Theodore Kowalski, my parents who are gay.

I have a lot of friends whose experiences growing up have been a lot like mine. My dads have been there for me through the good and the bad, mostly good. Like my friends, I have had growing up experiences such as school, girls, dating, saxophone lessons, jazz band, marching band, etcetera.

This last Saturday, my dads took me to get my driver's permit. They are always on my case about school. My dads always have supported me as I began to date. Because I am straight, they have taught me to be respectful of the girls I am dating and to respect myself. They have also taught me to be respectful of all people who might be different than we are.

It is not always easy telling my friends that I have gay parents. In most cases, they do not judge me by whom my parents are. My dads encourage me to be careful physically, socially, and emotionally. They always spend plenty of time talking to me. As a matter of fact, my friends say that they wish their parents would spend as much time with me as my dads do with me.

My dads are a couple as much as my friends' parents. They have been together for 25 years. And it is wrong for the State of Connecticut to prevent our family from getting the same benefits as a more traditional family.

My dads have always taught to respect and judge people by the way they act and treat other people. How can you say my family does not deserve the rights that have been given to married couples with children? Take these steps necessary to ensure strong Connecticut families for everyone.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you and I want to thank you both for coming up and Andrew, notwithstanding the fact that you go to the rival high school in Stamford, I very much appreciate your comments today and your participation in this process.

Thank you.

The next speaker then will be Teresa Younger, followed by Kevin Oullette and Dan Kelly.

TERESA YOUNGER: Good evening, Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, and members of the Judiciary Committee.

It is a pleasure for me to be here today. My name is Teresa Younger and I am the Executive Director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. You've seen me before you before and as you know, I represent over 5,000 members statewide. We are dedicated to protecting the principles of freedom and equality.

Much like when my nephew asks me what I do, I tell him I try to make the world fair.

The CCLU supports legal recognition of lesbian and gay relationships and it believes lesbian and gay men should have the right to marry. Nothing less, nothing else would accord with complete equality for same sex couples.

I will speak on the bills before you today, but what I'd like to do is highlight the testimony of Representative John Lewis. John Lewis is a representative of the 5^th Congressional District of Georgia. And he has been there since 1987.

He was one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Marches from Selma to Montgomery and one of the six major organizers of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington.

He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King from the time that he was 21 until Dr. King's death in 1968.

John Lewis spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives against DOMA. His words read, "Let me say that when I was growing up in the south during the 1940's and 1950's, the great majority of the people in that region believed that Black people should not be able to enter public places of accommodation and they felt that Black people should not be able to register to vote and many felt that was right, but it was wrong. I think as politicians, as elected officials, we should not only follow, but we must lead, lead our districts. Not put our fingers into the wind to see which way the air is blowing, but be leaders. Mr. Chairman, this DOMA bill is mean. It is cruel. This bill seeks to divide our nation, turn Americans against Americans, sow the seeds of fear, hatred and intolerance. Let us remember the preamble to the Declaration of Independence -- "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men, all people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

This bill is a slap in the face of the Declaration of Independence. It denies gay men and women the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage is a basic human right. You cannot tell people who they can fall in love with. Dr. Martin Luther King used to say when people talked to him about interracial marriage and I quote, "Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married."

When we are talking about human beings, people like you, people who want to get married, buy houses, spend their lives with the one they love, they have done nothing wrong.

I will not turn my back on another American. I will not oppress my fellow human beings. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on color and race not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation."

He concludes, "We are moving toward the 21^st century. Let us come together, create one nation, one people, one family, one house. The American house, the American family, the American nation."

The CCLU is in strong opposition to DOMA. It should be noted that DOMA does not just limit the relationship of a man and woman, but it goes further. It goes on to destroy the rights of unmarried couples.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

TERESA YOUNGER: The CCLU is also in support of marriage and civil unions.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Kevin Oullette, followed by Dan Kelly and Charles Giampietro. Kevin Oullette? Then we'll go on to Charles Giampietro, followed by Dan Kelly and then Pastor Jim Caron.

CHARLES GIAMPIETRO: Good afternoon. Good evening, I should say.

My comments are rather lengthy. I've submitted them in writing to you all with copies. So I'll simply paraphrase a few things.

My name is Charles Giampietro. My wife and I have five children and we live in Meriden. And we've been married almost nineteen years and I'm here on behalf of both my wife and myself to support the DOMA legislation and oppose the other two bills, H.B. 6389 and H.B. 6388.

Marriage is the foundation of civilization. Marriage begets family. Family beget children and children are the future of the world. Those who enter into marriage are not perfect and we're plagued by divorce and broken homes. But to say that marriage is no more than a contract between any two people that say they want to be together is absurd. It's not something that needs proof or explanation. It's a fact that all can acknowledge and attest to as self-evident.

We know innately and absolutely what makes a good marriage. We know just as innately and absolutely what makes a bad marriage. It's something that people know.

Marriage is something that's grown up over centuries and millennia into the institution that it is. It's not something that was set up by majority vote or by manipulation of public opinion or pleas for compassion.

Love Makes a Family, Pete Flagg and others would have us believe that it's a civil rights issue. I submit to you that this is a ploy and a desperate attempt to gain legal standing for an issue that's not truly a legal one at all.

I've heard the civil rights argument before and I have to say I find it seriously lacking to the point where the contrivances behind it are pretty obvious. The logic doesn't work, gentlemen and ladies.

How do we get to civil rights and discrimination? Didn't we skip a few steps in the comparison of equal rights? Is there no difference between a homosexual couple and a heterosexual couple? Is a person's gender incidental or inconsequential?

There are obvious differences. If gender is incidental, or unimportant, why is sex the single biggest sales tactic in the world? There are assumptions like this that go through the civil rights argument. We're not talking about racial -- interracial couples. We're not talking about race discrimination. We're talking about issues that I believe can be remedied with the existing laws and to start dickering around with the definition of marriage at this point is misguided at best.

I think it's important, just to sum up, to say that I don't have any misguidance about the complexity of the issue that's before you, but I would submit to you that the proper addressing of the issues that have been raised of the cries for compassion and the cries for civil rights is not through changing the definition of marriage.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker then is Dan Kelly, followed by Pastor Jim Caron and then Jared Clark.

DANIEL KELLY: Thank you. My full name is Daniel John Kelly. I reside in Norwalk, Connecticut and it was --

SEN. MCDONALD: Almost as good as getting here from Stamford.

DANIEL KELLY: Very close, very close. It was with some ambivalence that I decided to come and testify here today. I've been in a relationship with my partner, Douglas, for over thirteen years now.

After a year and one-half of dating, we decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. The next logical step would have been marriage. So we met with a lawyer. We prepared wills, durable powers of attorney, medical conservatorships and we also had a ceremony presided over by a priest of the Episcopal Church.

We live in Norwalk, quite openly as a couple. I recently became included on Douglas' health insurance plan. He is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and it is through the Diocese that I now have health coverage.

Life is good. People see us as married. Most of our major immediate legal basis, we feel we have covered. Not having a government sanctioned union available for us, frankly made us think more about what marriage is and why we wanted it, not just legal protection, although that's incredibly important, but we needed to share to the world, our world, our friends and families, that we too are now one, to celebrate that with us, to acknowledge us and through the good times and the bad, to support us, both as individuals and as a couple and they have.

What I want most from the State now is simple acknowledgment, to respect our relationship. We've put in the time, the effort, the commitment and we've earned the right to be acknowledged.

We were lucky enough to be able to afford an attorney, many others can't. We were lucky enough that one of us works for an employer that recognizes same sex relationships, others don't. And we were determined and creative enough to allow ourselves all the powers and responsibilities of marriage that we could manufacture.

We don't want to hurt the institution of marriage. When we get it, we want it to be as strong as ever and I respect the right of any and all religions to choose their own rules regarding marriage, which they already do. My family is predominantly Roman Catholic. My brother was denied marriage because he married outside the faith. My grandfather was once divorced. He waited fifteen years to be married in the church. Until then, a civil service sufficed.

The institution of marriage is not the property of any one religion or fashion of one religion. Civil marriage must be the right of all.

And if you have any doubts or reservations about supporting same sex marriage, I understand. I certainly felt the same way. I was raised to be heterosexual. I learned from childhood to be afraid of, to dislike, and even hate gay people. it took me sometimes, many painful years to come to terms with my sexual orientation and additional years after that to stop thinking of myself as a second class citizen.

Many of our friends still live in fear and as open as we are, the shadow of violence still walks with us and although our daily life is usually free of provocations, part of us is still always on guard.

We're very grateful to live in the State of Connecticut where there are so many protections for all people. I ask you to take the next step forward.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Pastor Jim Caron, followed by Jared Clark, and then Kathy Nelson.

JAMES CARON: Good evening.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good evening.

JAMES CARON: Senator and all the Representatives and it's my privilege to be able to be here before you this evening and to thank you for your time in allowing me to read it simply because it is a rather lengthy testimony and I think we'll be briefer.

I strongly encourage and urge this committee to approve DOMA H.B. 5356 and I strongly urge this committee to oppose same sex marriage bill H.B. 6389 (inaudible-tape switched sides-some testimony not recorded) -- is a physiological and natural reason.

Nature, along with anatomy and physiology of the human body itself teaches us that marriage of the same sex is contrary to logical and natural reasoning. Anatomically, the parts, simply stated, do not fit. A male part simply does not fit into another male part and a female part does not fit into another female part. They are simply in contradiction in terms and in practice.

Likewise, in the animal world, animals in general do not even do what humans want to do. Male animals seek female animals and female animals seek male animals to do what they need to do.

Some male and female animals will even mate for life. This is inherent in their natures. Thus, anatomy and physiology and nature teaches us that homosexuality and marriage of the same sex is completely unnatural, immoral and violates the laws of nature and the laws of the human body.

My second reason for recommending the approval of the DOMA act and rejecting same sex marriage and the civil unions is a socio-political view of morality. Our society, in fact, our world that we live in with its traditional values and morals disapproves of same sex marriage and civil union among the gay and lesbian world.

Allow me to quote one political view on this issue in America. At the Republican National Convention in 1992, one politician stated, "Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choose religious schools and we stand with him against the immoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the standing in law as married men and women." Their position, simply stated, was that this issue was immoral. Giving gay and lesbian couples the same standing in law as married men and women is not only amoral, but immoral and conflicts with traditional morals.

Allow me a concluding statement for my third point which is basically based on my twenty-eight years of research of the Bible of marriage, sex and you have this paper for your reading.

SEN. MCDONALD: Please keep it short.

JAMES CARON: Simply stated, as I conclude. The Old Testament and New Testament states that marriage is between one man and one woman and the same sex marriage violates God's views on marriage. I'm sure that you will hear arguments of religious coercion, intolerance. You will hear about religious hatred against homosexuals, but the bottom line is this. Sex is sex and any sex outside the context of marriage of one man and one woman is naturally and morally, traditionally and biblically wrong. You must take a stand and approve a DOMA bill and oppose same sex marriage and civil union bills.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

JAMES CARON: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Jared Clark, followed by Kathy Nelson, and then Terry Lawrence.

JARED CLARK: Chairman Lawlor, Chairman McDonald, and other members of the Judiciary Committee, my name is Jared Lee Clark. I'm the son of Bonnie Beck and Catrina Clark. My parents and I reside in New Haven.

I thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of H.B. 6389 concerning same sex marriage.

In preparing for today, I've done a great deal of thinking about the movement that I'm trying to be a part of. To me, the illegality of same sex marriage is a part of our culture that will be looked back upon as being just as ridiculous as denying women or African Americans the right to vote, refusing to allow interracial marriage, or rejecting a nationwide integrated education system.

However, because we have not yet reached that hour when committed same sex couples will be able to attain the same rights allotted to their heterosexual friends and neighbors, I find it necessary to share a few details about my life as the son of two women that you might better understand the nature of this kind of family.

My brother is the son of my non-biological other mother and I cannot possibly imagine feeling closer to him or to the rest of this side of the family were I to share their blood. In fact, I'm very close to both sides of my extended families. Never have I felt estranged or like an outsider. Both sides treat me equally like one of their own, which I do not find surprising in any way, considering that I am one of their own.

At home, although I am perhaps the victim of twice the amount of nagging to clean my room, I am also the focus of twice the amount of motherly love for which I am grateful.

Having spent lots of time at the homes of my friends, I know the typicalities of their every day relationships with their parents. In my family, there's just as much fighting over the remote, just as much arguing over whose turn it is to let in the dog, just as much dispute over what radio station to listen to in the car.

However, we also have the relaxed, warm family dinners every night, the same weekend trips up to the ski mountain, the same therapy of sharing the rough details of our day when we get home from work and school.

I would like to address some of the fears that people might have about children who are brought up by a same sex couple. I often try to step back and think about how it would have been to grow up with a father. There are usual stereotypes that people must have. For example, maybe I would be better at sports. Unlikely, I'm a three year old soccer player and captain of my high school team. Or if I had a father I'd be more of a leader, whereas having two mothers would lead me to be weak and anti-social.

Again, unlikely, I am president of the Student Body at Hannon Hall Country Day School. Of course, I cannot speak for all children who have been brought up by same sex couples, and I cannot even imagine that I would share very much in common with them other than family arrangements, but I would like to think that my personal experience has proven that having two mothers and no father has not slowed me down at all from achieving many of my personal goals.

Then there's the idea that maybe not having a father would create some sort of polarity in my character because I have no male role models. Again, I say rubbish. My male role models have names like Nelson Mandela, Sean Connery, Shaika (inaudible) John Locke, Gandhi, and (inaudible).

I hope I have been able to impart some information to you today that will facilitate your judgment of the matter at hand. For me, one thing will always remain certain. Love makes a family, so why can't the laws make one?

I thank you for your consideration of this important matter. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Jared. Any questions? Representative Spallone.

REP. SPALLONE: Yes. I'm trying to keep -- we're trying to keep our questions limited and comments at this point. I just wanted to say thank you. That was very eloquent. You did a great job and we appreciate it. I believe I speak for others. We appreciated your candor and your testimony. Outstanding.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Jared, actually I think Senator Roraback had a question, as well.

SEN. RORABACK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just quickly. Where do you hope to go to college?

JARED CLARK: Well, that's the question of the day, but I applied to a bunch of ivy leagues and some D-3 schools for soccer, mainly, but it's still up in the air as of today.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good luck to you, Jared. Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Kathy Nelson, followed by Terry Lawrence, and then Joe Morin. Kathy Nelson? Is Joe Morin here? Give me a second, I've got to get myself organized here.

Then Pastor Tim McCarty.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER FROM THE AUDIENCE: (inaudible-not speaking into a microphone)

SEN. MCDONALD: Well, we're trying to keep it balanced so that we have each side going. So, Pastor Tim McCarty. Pastor Jim Townsley. Millie Meuller. Richard Kendall. Maryanne Presamate. Elizabeth Warhols. Warnols? Lucille Blasig. George Roberts. George Roberts? David Bergen. David Bergen? Dosolina Fiore. Dosolina Fiore? Theresa Krankowski. And the last person signed up on the opposition list is Chas Schempp. Chas Schempp. Okay. Is there anybody else in the room who is interested in speaking in opposition to the civil unions or the way we did was pro or con on the concept of civil unions.

So if there's anybody who would have liked to have signed up on the con list, please step forward now.

Okay, then we will pick up with Terry Lawrence.

TERRY LAWRENCE: Good evening.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good evening.

TERRY LAWRENCE: Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

SEN. MCDONALD: Could you just pull the microphone towards you, Ma'am?

TERRY LAWRENCE: Yes, absolutely.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

TERRY LAWRENCE: Is that better?

SEN. MCDONALD: That's perfect.

TERRY LAWRENCE: I'm just going to hit a few of the highlights of my own background so that I can put my request into a perspective.

My partner, Caroline and I will celebrate our 34^th anniversary this spring. I worked at the Connecticut State Department -- Southern Connecticut State University. During my tenure I also worked with the Connecticut Department of Education, establishing programs for personnel working with challenged children ages four to six. Later, I co-chaired a task force studying extending services to children birth to three and I sat on the Advisory Committee to the Governor studying how to implement services.

There were many other things, but I won't go into that.

The Dean of the college asked Caroline to collect data, organize it and write the 1988 accreditation report for the college.

How is all of this relevant to supporting same sex unions you might ask? Well, we offer our backgrounds to establish that during our professional careers, we were trusted by the University to do difficult work for them, for our students, for children, and for the State of Connecticut. And I suspect that most of the people testifying today in favor of same sex unions or marriage are your relatives, your doctors, lawyers, technicians, neighbors, co-workers, members of your faith communities and more and they are all helping you and your families.

Back to me and my partner and to our concerns. first, there is the disposition of our estate. Current Connecticut inheritance laws requires non-relative heirs to pay much higher taxes than married couples. In fact, describing our assets as an estate is a stretch and between the stock market and any attempt to deplete our assets further will put the surviving partner at severe financial risk.

More importantly, we want, in case of a catastrophic illness, we want to have access to the disabled partner and to personnel and as you heard earlier, so I won't repeat any other stories about Bill and Bob and how horrible that was in not being able to get through and get the information that was needed or even to be present. We had legislation passed in the spring, June, 2002 and then it went into effect on October 1^st, saying one, that we could, in fact, get to our partners and two, we could get to personnel.

And that, I think, should go a long way to making things a lot better. Unfortunately, the scenario has, for so many years, been that in medical settings same sex partners are treated as legal strangers and homophobic personnel often ignore documents designating same sex partners as health care agents.

Even more often, people who do not harvest such prejudices simply don't see us as families. Same sex unions or marriages would go a long way towards our being viewed as families and being taken seriously, to say nothing of all those many, many rights that everybody's been talking about.

I would like, hopefully, before I bite the dust in my lifetime, to see that happen. And hopefully to have my partner at my side or me at her side, whoever predeceases the other.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much.

As the hour is getting late, I was just speaking to Representative Lawlor. We are supposed to be ending this at six o'clock, although we are willing to - at least Representative Lawlor and I are willing to stay around a little bit longer. I know other members have, in some instances, other obligations that they need to get to, but if your schedules do permit, we would ask you to stick around for at least a little bit of time, as much as you can.

And I would like to just briefly go through the list of the remaining speakers, all of whom have signed up on the pro list and find out if you are still either here or interested in still testifying before the committee.

So when I call your name, if you're interested in still testifying, please raise your hand and say yes.

Michael Carney. Jane and Mark Lacedania. Yes? Lori Pelletier. David Owens. Roberta Cooper. Roberta Cooper? Carol Buckheirt. James Hanley and Norman Gamick. Yes? Alice Pritchard. Kathy Ferry and Pat Duffy. Amy Miller and Chris Reed. No? Yes, you want to speak? Thank you.

Reverend Susan DeSimone. That's a yes, right? okay. Louis Lista. Thank you. Ellen Scalletar. Ellen's left. Maureen Boylan. John Currie. John Currie? Okay.

Morgan Graham. Karen Bresciano. Carl Shields and Harvey Brown. Reverend Patricia Gallagher. Reverend Barkman. Aaron Levin and James Morgan. Reverend Sarah Flynn. Reverend Sarah Flynn? Eila Algood and Holly.

Bernie Kettle. All the way from Greenwich, too, huh. Dan Patterson. Brian Schwartz. Kim Dugan. Alan Spector and J. P. Bingham. Kathy Anderson. Randy Decker. Shaun Lang. Mike Bracken. Yes? And there was a supplemental list somewhere. Angelo -- I have Angelo Calos. Carolyn Gabel. Wallace Mang. Peter Marotto.

Okay. So we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, -- eleven more individuals who would like to testify.

REP. LAWLOR: And could I add, just for those of you who passed, if you had written testimony, If you've given it to the committee staff, it will be included with the permanent record of this bill. So even though you didn't actually testify, it will be part of the legislative history of the bill.

SEN. MCDONALD: I believe I called -- there was somebody. I believe I called on the opposed list, Chas Schempp. Would you like to speak, sir? Feel free to come forward.

CHARLES SCHEMPP: Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Charles Schempp. I'm from Trumbull. I'm 70 years old. I'm a veteran, a retired Christian father.

I'm opposed to the same sex civil ceremony and I have just a couple of observations before I get into some points.

We are in danger of being governed by pressure groups in this country and the great majority is sadly being roughed out of the loop.

And the other thing I am finding in my years since I've been retired is I've noticed that the family, a we know it, is becoming greatly under fire more and more and I don't see the thing moderating at all. And it seems to me to be the product of all this pressure grouping that's going on all the time.

I hope you men and women in the Legislature recognize this.

I have a few points I'd just like to make, so I'll get on with it. I feel that there's a small minority that's having a majority impact on the control of all our legal systems. Not only with respect to gay rights, but minorities seem to me to be legislating over the entire population of this country. If you're not in a pressure group, you're not getting represented anymore.

With respect to the advancement of this same sex ceremony, one thing that I haven't heard today is the public is being asked to broaden our pension system that's going to involve the state and the federal government. I don't see any other groups that are going to participate in the governmental (inaudible) as easily as completely as this group and once the same sex marriage comes into legality, you will find more closet gays coming out and you will also find people who are just looking for free money who will come out as gays just to jump onto the public (inaudible).

The gay life will be easily promoted in the public schools as the couples will be allowed -- will actually be fraternizing in the school system and they will be able to freely teach their lifestyle to young students that are under fire from the sexual world and all sorts of ways that are less than pleasant and opposed to family life. This is one more thing they will have to face.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Are you wrapping up? Thank you.

CHARLES SCHEMPP: I'm getting to the end. If enough states pass the ceremony, it will bring up the problem of open gays in the military again and it will create arguments on the policy and cause problems in the ranks.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much, sir.

The next speaker is --

CHARLES SCHEMPP: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: -- I'm sorry. I think it's Jane and Mark Lacedania. Lacedania?

MARK LACEDANIA: For the record, my name is Mark Lacedania. I'm here with my wife, Jane Lacedania.

We live in Simsbury, Connecticut.

We're here today not as experts, but as parents. We're going to read a story. It's a story about our daughter. Our daughter's name is Jill and she's in the room. Many of the people here, I think who are supporters of Loves Makes a Family know who she is and the story's included in the Love Makes a Family testimonial book.

We remember our daughter, Jill introducing her bear, Ted to her nursery school teacher, proudly explaining, "He's a girl." She has always been an activist, particularly around women's rights, denouncing the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders as a grade school student, questioning her high school's policy of having the girls swim on a boys team rather than on a separate girls team during their own season.

And leading several students and walking out of class in protest when a teacher made homophobic comments.

While we admired and encouraged her activism, we let her down when she came out to us as a lesbian during her senior year of high school. Initially, we saw her sexual orientation as a rejection of our values rather than a reinforcement of those core beliefs.

As she left for college, we selfishly thought that by being gay she was dismissing our lifestyle. We were also fearful of the prejudice that we knew she would experience in college. However, at Wesley, she entered into an environment and a relationship that encouraged her to flourish. We will always be grateful to her college girlfriend for the love and support that she provided our daughter and for her role in helping us see the value of same gender relationships.

The harmfulness of our initial response to Jill's coming out and the good that we saw in her subsequent relationship, both underscore for us the importance of opening marriage to same gender couples. It is clearly in the interest of society to encourage long term committed relationships between two people that love each other regardless of their genders.

Gay and lesbian couples need and deserve legal recognition and support for their marriages which already exists in every sense except under the law. Allowing same gender couples access to the familiar well understood institution of marriage simply acknowledges their common humanity.

It will also serve to make being gay or lesbian less foreign and threatening to all those other parents whose children will come out to them in the future.

Why our daughter is gay has never been significant to us. Jill is gay because she is. And if Jill is gay because of genes or environmental factors, it's obviously unfair to discriminate against her on that basis.

If she is gay by choice, it is prudent to honor her sense of herself. What is important to us is that she is honest, that she is comfortable with herself, and that she continue her valuable work on behalf of equality.

We feel the rightness of her convictions and want to travel the road near her knowing that is her calling. And that's why we're here today.

Thank you very much for listening.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions?

REP. LAWLOR: I just want to make one comment. First of all, thank you very much for coming. It's a very important story for us to here, but I just wanted to add that I'm happy your daughter is opposed to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and I hope she's also opposed to the Dallas Cowboys.

MARK LACEDANIA: I don't think she cares much about football.

REP. LAWLOR: It's a bad thing. Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker will be David Owens.

DAVID OWENS: Thank you. It's a pleasure to speak to you this evening. I'm happy that my husband, Dennis Morin, was able to join us. He made his trip to the veterinarian to take care of the cat today and made it back on time.

It's a pleasure to be able to talk about Dennis in a legal setting as my husband. We are married and our family lives together with both our families, we are married in the view of our workmates at both his own work and mine. And we are married in the context of our church, which is probably our number one joy in life.

Dennis serves on the Board of Christian Education at the First Church of Christ in Hartford and I serve as co-chair of the Board of Deacons there.

The First Church of Christ in Hartford was the first church. Before there was a Connecticut, before the Declaration of Independence, First Church was there. Before there were houses or farms or a legislature. Its members and time created the government of Hartford, hid the King's Charter in a tree, founded the Civil Authority of the State of Connecticut, and ratified the Constitution of our nation on behalf of the people of Connecticut.

In those early years, the city and state and nation honored the sacraments of our church, recognizing as married our members who stood before the congregation to share their vows.

When we came before the church in the year 2000 to ask for the support of the congregation in our vows of love, they had already decided, based on the open and affirming policy that they would honor such request.

We experience this church as a place where our love for Christ and for each other could keep on growing and we wanted to celebrate with welcoming our friends and sharing in our vows. And so we did that on September 16, 2000.

A few months later, in a meeting of the Board of Deacons, the Reverend Sherlock shared the happy news that another wedding would be coming up. The young man and woman from the congregation had approached him to pick a date. However, the Minister informed the Deacons that theirs would not be just a wedding, it would be a celebration of their covenant of holy union.

So the church had expanded in its thinking, returning to the root meaning of this great sacrament and knowing and expressing that there was not any difference, that both celebrations were the same in God's eyes and in the view of His people.

Yet we live each day with the knowledge that the State of Connecticut has no such view. There is a past of honoring the sacraments of the church that founded the State, but at present of not so honoring them.

There is a principle of not establishing one religion over another. But a reality of holding sacraments from church is more important, more valid, somehow more worthy of honor than the sacraments of another church.

There is the principle that members of one religion will not be advantaged in their dealings with the State compared to members of other religions, yet there is a reality that the privileges and obligations of civil marriage are denied to some because their religion is not the established one.

Our legislators need to give us an answer. Why don't our sacraments matter?

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Carol Buckheirt. And I'm sorry. Maybe the next speaker could also come up and get ready. It would be James Hanley and Norman Gamick, followed by Amy Miller and Chris Reed.

Good evening.

CAROL BUCKHEIRT: Good afternoon. My name is Carol Buckheirt and I live in West Hartford with my partner, Karen Prestwood.

There was a time when it didn't matter to me all that much whether my relationship with my life partner was recognized by the wider world. What difference did it make? As a couple, we already could be part to the fabric of our extended family's lives, dancing at weddings, sharing holiday meals, delighting in the company of nieces and nephews through their births, baptisms, and baseball games. Rebelling in weekend long family reunions, celebrating graduations, and mourning at funerals of those we loved.

We were accepted and acknowledged in meaningful ways by our families, our church, and our community. We both worked full-time, attended functions as a couple, and volunteered in the community.

I rather naively presumed that the denial of our legal status as a couple was insignificant. My thinking has since changed and my lesson is aching similar to what thousands of gay and lesbian couples commonly experience.

Several years ago, my partner, Karen, underwent rather routine surgery in a hospital where she is a physician faculty member. When her surgery lasted hours longer than planned, and it was clear that serious complications had arisen, the medical staff repeatedly withheld information from me about Karen's condition because I was not an immediate family member.

Although I had been waiting near the nurses' station all day, and had been in a committed relationship with Karen for five years at that point, I had to endure the indignity of finding a pay phone and asking Karen's sister in Massachusetts to call the nurses' station for information on her condition.

All of this occurred despite my explanations of our long term relationship and Karen's explicit instructions to her physician prior to surgery that I be appraised of her condition. This sympathetic medical staff was just following the law.

We have now been in a committed relationship for twelve years. We are also now acutely aware of the securities, benefits, responsibilities, and civil protections under the law that heterosexual couples enjoy, yet we are denied. These include the right to unquestioned medical decision-making for each other, the provision of nontaxable employer provided health insurance, unquestioned spousal visitation rights in times of hospitalization, access to partner's benefits, including unemployment compensation, protections for bereavement leave, and pension coverage.

Currently, our marriage is invisible in the eyes of the State. I hope that you will recognize that barring the door to civil rights and protections to a group, any group, is wrong. The emotional, social, and financial consequences of the denial of civil marriage benefits to same sex couples can be devastating, especially in times of crisis or loss.

I look forward to the day when all same sex couples are recognized and treated equally by the State. and I urge you to extend Connecticut's marriage laws to include same sex couples.

Thank you very much.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is James Hanley and Norman Gamick, followed by Amy Miller and Chris Reed, and then Reverend Susan DeSimone.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER FROM THE AUDIENCE: (INAUDIBLE-NOT SPEAKING INTO A MICROPHONE)

SEN. MCDONALD: I'm working on it. Good evening.

JAMES HANLEY: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is James Hanley. I'm from Storrs. My partner, Norman Garrick, who is a professor at UConn, couldn't be here today, but he asked me to be here.

We have submitted written testimony, but I wanted to focus just very briefly on one particular issue regarding the DOMA act that exists in federal law and is being proposed for Connecticut.

I find it extraordinary in terms of it turning constitutional rights on its head. I think we're dealing here with something that is very simple.

If the State has a compelling interest in fostering relationships and stability and providing stability for children, education for children, then that is something that is based on a universal right, a constitutional right that is in the Connecticut Constitution and also in the federal Constitution.

And therefore, I think that what we have in the current situation is that there has been created a special class of people, namely heterosexuals, who can gain special benefits within the society which are denied to Norman and myself and to many other same sex couples.

And I think that that's a very profound shortcoming and I think that if the State does, indeed, have an interest in having a stability in providing some sort of legal framework to foster stability, then it should be available to everybody, not just to a small protected -- a large protected class.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

Amy Miller and Chris Reed.

AMY MILLER: Hi. My name is Amy Miller and I'm here today to share with you part of my story and my hope for my future for my relationship.

After I met my partner, Christine, I knew it was time to come out to my family. I knew that this relationship was particularly special and I didn't want merely to introduce her to my family as a buddy.

My mother's reaction was less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly. She told me she always suspected it, but secretly hoped that I was bisexual and then maybe I could still get married and be taken care of.

She also said she didn't think it was what God wanted and she hoped that things would be different.

A year later, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. After a couple of months of trying to balance work and doctors' appointments, Chris and I decided it was time for me to quit my job so that I could take care of my mom and my dad during this extremely difficult time.

Since Chris and I had recently moved into together, this meant that Chris agreed to financially support me while I took care of my family.

During that time, Chris and I would go to my parents and while I visited with my mom or helped my dad, Chris would prepare dinner, usually something that would last a couple of days so my dad wouldn't have to cook as much or take care of some other mundane details so the rest of us wouldn't have to worry about it.

I remember Chris missing her family events because we always suspected that as you passed, each holiday and special occasion would probably be my mother's last one. If I hadn't known how remarkable Chris was and how committed to me she was, then it became extraordinarily apparent during this time in my life. It didn't go unrecognized by my family either. One of the last real conversations I had with my mother, I remember her saying she had come to terms with her death and it was okay and she also felt good knowing I was going to be taken care of.

Chris and I purchased our first home together one month after my mother had passed. While I was busy keeping it together and moving forward, Chris was busy making sure I had momentums from my mother such as plants from her garden, which we planted in our own home and now watch grow and flourish.

No, I can't tell you that if my mother were alive today she would be sitting next to me urging you to support marriage, but what I can tell you is that my mother had the opportunity to witness my relationship with Christine and the strength and the support we offer one another. My mother recognized that our informal commitment was clearly as strong and as real as the commitment my married sisters had made.

This October we will celebrate our seventh year together. In these past years we've continued to build a life together. We became foster parents, joined a church, and balance work and family responsibilities. Our story is not unique. Hundreds of same sex couples and families across the State make these sacrifices and share these joys without the general legal and social supports that opposite sex couples enjoy.

I urge your support of the marriage bill and I thank you for your time.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

Reverend Susan DeSimone, followed by Maureen Boylan and then Morgan Graham.

REP. LAWLOR: If I could, just for one moment, --

REVEREND SUSAN DeSIMONE: I'm sorry.

REP. LAWLOR: I just wanted to say something for a moment before you testify, if it's okay. And there was some discussion earlier about public opinion polls, that type of thing and apparently Channel 8 did a story tonight about our hearings and they had all day running a question, "Do you support same sex marriage or not?" And the results, if you're interested, were 53% yes and 47% no. There were some discussions before about public opinion polls. I thought I'd throw that out there for what it's worth.

REVEREND SUSAN DeSIMONE: Hi. I'm a pastor in the United Church of Christ who has come today to try to persuade you that allowing lesbian and gay marriage is not only the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do in light of biblical teaching.

What does the message of the Bible really boil down to? It says, "that God loves us and wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves, practicing kindness and justice." The moral imperative derived from this is the golden rule, "do unto others as you would have other do unto you."

This is what all the great religions teach. But sadly, the teachings of great spiritual leaders run up against our human tendencies to want to take advantage of others and to try to recreate others in our own image.

These are the seeds of injustice. In our society, as in others, much injustice has been rationalized by quoting scripture inappropriately and at the same time, by dehumanizing those others, trying to make it appear that they aren't fully human like we are.

For example, slavery and Jim Cole laws were defended by quoting the Bible. And simultaneously, African Americans were dehumanized by being called "lazy" or "primitive" or worse.

In this same way, we, the heterosexual majority dehumanize gays and lesbians and we quote scripture inappropriately to justify denying them the same rights that we have, rights like getting married.

The laws prohibiting gay and lesbian marriage are not based on religious principles. They are legalized taboos based on fear of the other. I know that many legislators are troubled by the injustice we visit on gays and lesbians and I know at the same time that it's hard to stick one's neck out and vote against an entrenched taboo.

But I am hoping that some of you will be willing to do just that on this committee for the sake of justice.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

Maureen Boylan, followed by Morgan Graham, and then Karen Bresciano.

MAUREEN BOYLAN: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of legislation. Thank you for listening to our cause and I appreciate the time that you've taken to stay on behalf of our cause.

I am a married gay woman living in the State of Connecticut and although not legal, we are married in the eyes of God and I have brought forth to you my wedding album in case anyone would like to see what gay happiness is all about. I have been married for 2-1/2 years.

They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend and that there are five c's to describe that beautiful diamond. Well, in the LMF world, we have five c's of our own to describe our relationships and unions as such.

Cherished, civil, celibatory, committed, with a whole lot of compassion.

These are very important and intimate words to describe two people in the same sex relationship wanting to be recognized as one.

To make an everlasting bond by pledging one's vows and having to share with family and friends you love. Having a celebration of marriage and having it permanently legal and to be able to enjoy the benefits of marriage that straight couples have.

My partner had experienced a heterosexual marriage for 29 years. She certainly knows the legal benefits that went along with it and you are certainly aware of what they are.

Now that she is enjoying a committed, loving union with me for five years, we realize how important and necessary the legal right of marriage is.

Three years ago, an openly gay Episcopalian minister performed our beautiful loving ceremony. Witnessed by all our family and friends, we pledged our vows to each other and received the Lord's blessing. An exciting fun filled wedding reception immediately followed as it would have any hetero wedding. She is my wife, my life, my friend for life. All of her grown sons, our family and friends have accepted our relationship as a union and now we expect the same from our government.

There are so many instances at home where the inequality surfaces. I am lucky enough to enjoy full health insurance benefits since my partner's employer recognizes domestic partnership insurance. However, this benefit does not come without strings. We were just notified that she will have to pay taxes on the amount of money her company had to pay for my insurance since I am not a recognized spouse. I am considered extra compensation. I ask you, is this fair?

I would like to be able to enjoy the peace of mind that when I pass on, my wife will enjoy an inheritance without the burden of huge taxation. We live as a committed family, sharing all household and daily living expenses and yet we are taxed as total single living individuals.

A straight couple can go and get a marriage license for about $30, gaining huge monetary benefits. Whereas gay couples have to spend thousands of dollars to obtain a lawyer to get legal documentation for a DNR, power of attorney, living wills, etcetera.

We have been given the right legally for DNR situations to make that unfortunate decision and ending a life. We can receive domestic partnership insurance, yet we can't get married. By the State of Connecticut granting these legal marriage rights to gay couples, they simplify a process that otherwise often unnecessarily ends up in the court system.

The best we can do is lead, follow, or get out of the way in making Connecticut the first state in establishing model laws that allow gay marriages.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much, Maureen. Any questions? Thank you.

MAUREEN BOYLAN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Next is Morgan Graham, then Karen Bresciano, and Wallace Mang.

MORGAN GRAHAM: Hi. First, I want to thank you for staying. This is so big because last year I came, didn't have time to testify. It was emotionally draining and to sit there and feel personally attacked and assaulted, I really am ready to talk to you.

My name is Morgan Graham -- (inaudible-tape switched sides-some testimony not recorded) on May 14, 1999 in a gorgeous rose garden and it was a perfect wedding day, if I do say so myself.

Currently we reside in the town of Fairfield. We searched all the towns in the county and fell head over heels for Fairfield. This history of the town is pretty intriguing because it was burned to the ground repeatedly by the British for being too liberal.

Not to mention the wonderful people and the outstanding school system.

We spend our weekends restoring our 1918 farmhouse and our summers are filled with endless hours of gardening and dinner parties on our front porch.

My wife works in computers for a great company. She has taken on the role of supporting the both of us so I can pursue my career as a stage actress. Soon we will start having children. There are many items to be accomplished before the children arrive.

We have begun our search for the right church. It is very important to us that our children are believers in God. To network with other families, we joined our town's Welcome Club. We are trying to adopt regular reading habits in hopes that our children will be enthusiastically drawn to books.

We will never expect perfect days, but want b's so we can better determine where our children's natural interest and talent exists. Above all, they will be taught to be curious, creative, compassionate, loving, and sophisticated thinkers.

As you can imagine, names have already been chosen. I would prefer to have a future Miss America, but my wife is hoping for a future UConn Husky point guard. Move over Terraci.

As you can see, we are very traditional people. We live and work and have values that are practiced by the majority of the American society. Our marriage means the world to us. Every day we wake up feeling so happy and blessed that we are together. Our lives are filled with loving family members, friends, and neighbors.

However, we are saddened that we are denied the equal rights that married heterosexual couples receive by the government. There's absolutely no reason why we should be denied these same rights.

I can honestly say I know the opposition. I was on that side of the Capitol (inaudible) at one time in my life. My heart was filled with hate and my mind was filled with nothing of my own. My life was small. I believed whatever the church said and never questioned anything for myself. I did not know what true joy was.

Did he go to sleep?

SEN. MCDONALD: No.

MORGAN GRAHAM: Now my heart is filled with love.

SEN. MCDONALD: He's just waiting to make a reappearance. It will be dramatic. Please continue.

MORGAN GRAHAM: Now my heart is filled with love and my mind with the confidence to believe in myself and the endless quest for wisdom. I truly wish this freedom and paradise for everyone.

Thank you for your time and effort and I truly hope Connecticut is the first to pass gay marriage.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you.

REP. LAWLOR: My ringer is on vibrate, just so you know. I wasn't violating any rules.

SEN. MCDONALD: Okay. Karen Bresciano, followed by Wallace Mang, Randy Decker and then the last speaker scheduled is Mike Bracken.

WALLACE E. MANY: Hi. I'm Wallace E. Many. I'm a member of the First Church of Christ Congregational, Middletown, Connecticut, which is a member church of the United Church of Christ.

I come to you with the request of a congregational meeting of the church which was held yesterday. For the past year and one-half, First Church members have been having informational meetings and discussions about the question of same sex marriage, both within committees of the church and in the congregation, as a whole.

As an open and affirming congregation, these discussions have focused on the issue of the church's responsibility to welcome all people into a covenantal relationship and to work for justice of all people.

These educational programs and discussions culminated in a vote that at a duly called congregational meeting yesterday, February 23^rd, at which the congregation voted overwhelmingly by a ratio of fifteen to one to send a resolution to the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ about same sex marriage.

The resolution is based on an understanding of Jesus' teachings that require the church and society to welcome all people, even those whom others may shun. It also takes note that legal marriage strengthens the union of committed couples by adding to their economic, emotional, and social stability.

The resolution asks that the Conference take a stand in favor of working with the Legislature and urging the Legislature to adopt marriage of same sex couples as a public policy for the State of Connecticut.

The Congregation, as a whole, urges the Legislature to provide equal opportunity for marriage for same sex couples.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Okay. Thank you.

I'm sorry, where was I? Wallace Mang. Is that right? That was you. I'm sorry. Then who did I miss? Karen Bresciano. Oh, okay, that was why I was off. Okay.

Then Randy Decker.

RANDY DECKER: Good evening. Thank you for hearing me. My name is Randy Decker. I wish I could bring you good news -- actually, I do have good news for you. Your efforts from last year have really changed and made an impact on my life.

So I'd like to lead off with that positive because the message I bring is not one of a typical message.

On September 11, 2001, I nearly died from a near liver failure and was rushed to Hartford Hospital. With my lover by my side, he was treated as a stranger. I had to fight saving my life and trying to keep the person that I love beside me the entire time and every time somebody new came in, I had to explain, please, I wasn't afraid of dying at that point, I was afraid of my lover being removed from me.

Regrettably or the good news is I recovered fully from that near liver failure. But repeatedly this past fall, I was back in the hospital again after the legislation that was passed last year regarding the teeth about allowing our partners to come to our bedside.

I spent from September 29^th until January 1^st in and out of the hospital. It was an entirely different experience. It was one of embrace and one when my partner wasn't there, the question was, where is Doug? Where is your other half? So I have to thank you and applaud your efforts in taking the baby steps forward because it really did make this last fall a much more positive and calming and reaffirming experience.

I never really expected the meat of the law to do that so quickly and to have the doctors and staff so proactively looking for my other half and when he wasn't missing, where's Doug.

Regrettably before that, I had some bad -- a bad experience and in reviewing the 588 laws of marriage, they're not all positive. They're more of what happens when marriage goes wrong.

I was in an abusive relationship for over three years. I had told my parents that I wanted to leave this relationship with this man, but unfortunately he announced that he was sick and had cancer. My family was adamant, no one was to go through that alone, so I stayed another year.

The abuse, emotional and physical continued. And I persevered and stayed by him, supporting to come to either unfortunately life's demise or a full recovery. He did make the full recovery and upon that, the abuse continued and finally, I only was struck once for the last time. I left with a ripped shirt on my back and with less than I had come into that relationship with.

Unfortunately, because the violence was so strong, the neighbors did call the police. The police and the courts did get involved. And it was nice to have the empathy of the court's officers explaining to me and saying, "My God, you're in a precarious situation. If you had been married to someone of the opposite sex, we have laws that would protect you. We could provide for you and make sure that you're okay." Instead, I left with the empathy of the court officers and a restraining order from a judge and wondering if I had to leave my new found home of Connecticut.

These issues still need to be addressed and I know that issuing the 588 laws to same gender couples would help us when things do go wrong.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Randy. Any questions? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is -- the next and final signed up speaker is Mike Bracken.

MIKE BRACKEN: Good evening.

SEN. MCDONALD: Good evening.

MIKE BRACKEN: Senator McDonald, Representative Lawlor, members of the committee.

My name is Mike Bracken. I'm here representing the Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Civil Rights. The coalition has been working for over nineteen years to protect and advance civil rights for all LGBT people.

We are here today to support raised H.B. 6389, AN ACT CONCERNING SAME SEX MARRIAGE and to oppose committee H.B. 5356, AN ACT CONCERNING MARRIAGE.

Connecticut has a proud history of protecting LGBT civil rights. We were the third state in the nation to pass a state anti-discrimination statute. We have protections against hate crimes, a law protecting students from discrimination in schools, and the right of legal adoption for same gender couples.

Additionally, last year this committee voted to expand the rights to same sex couples to offer additional protections to the relationships of same gender couples.

However, we are still only a tiny fraction of the rights that should be offered to LGBT couples. A 2001 vote.com survey of Connecticut respondents showed 53% supported bestowing the rights on marriage on same gender couples. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court struck down the remaining interracial marriage laws and declared the freedom to marry belongs to all Americans. The court describes marriage as one of our vital personal rights which is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness in free people.

The 2001 census provided the best count of same sex couples ever conducted. Nationally, over 600,000 unmarried partner households were recorded, an increase of 314% since the 1990 census. The census showed that 99.3% of all counties in the United States had gay couples in almost all districts represented by state and national legislative representatives.

In Connecticut, the number of unmarried partner households numbered over 7,000, an increase of 254%. The tally would be even greater if they reflected non-residing couples and single individuals in the LBGT community.

These numbers make it clear that recognition of these couples is long overdue.

In Connecticut, we have hundreds of statutes which bestow on couples the rights and responsibilities of state sanctioned marriage. Additionally, we are asking for the State not to interfere with same gender couples that choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of civil marriage and vote against committee H.B. 5356.

Connecticut has made important and progressive movement toward offering protections to families. Committee H.B. 5356 is an enormous step backwards.

Our LGBT individuals and families live in every community in Connecticut and call upon their state legislators to represent our families, our concerns, and commitments.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. Any questions? Representative McMahon.

REP. MCMAHON: I appreciate you coming today, Mike. Mike is here, I think, just fifteen minutes short of twelve hours. I think you arrived at seven o'clock this morning and I appreciate you staying for the whole session.

MIKE BRACKEN: Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much, Mr. Bracken.

That is the last scheduled speaker who has signed up. If there is anybody who would like to testify and you haven't heard your comments or your sentiments already spoken about, please step forward now. And for the record, please identify yourself so that we can include it in the record.

GEORGE SNYDER: My name is George Snyder. I just want to straighten out something about the Knights of Columbus petition. Several speakers seem to brag about the 70,000 signatures that they obtained.

I just want you to know that according to the Hartford Courant, there are 1.4 million Roman Catholics in the State of Connecticut. I'm one of them. If you do the math, 70,000 signatures represents 5% of the Roman Catholic population in the State of Connecticut. I don't think you have to be too concerned about 5%.

I just wanted you to know that.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you. Any other people? Please come forward.

CYNTHIA DuBUKE: For the record, my name is Cynthia DuBuke. I'm a resident of Hartford, Connecticut and I actually want to read my father's testimony because he couldn't be here and his name is Reverend Raymond DuBuke of East Haven, Connecticut.

REP. LAWLOR: Where?

CYNTHIA DuBUKE: Huh?

REP. LAWLOR: Which town?

CYNTHIA DuBUKE: East Haven. Your district.

SEN. MCDONALD: I hear they have great representation in the General Assembly.

CYNTHIA DuBUKE: I'd like to think so. Okay. Here it goes. Sorry, it took me a second to find it.

So I speak on behalf of my father who could not be here today.

As a father of three sons and seven daughters and a grandfather of seven granddaughters and four grandsons, I demand that the State stop discriminating against people who are not lucky enough to be born into the heterosexual majority.

Society doesn't need laws to protect the majority. The majority has every advantage and the ability to protect its own interest.

It is minorities who need the protection provided by laws and officers of the law because their weakness makes them vulnerable to the strong.

Please show the courage to defy the efforts by some misguided members of sexual majority to torture their neighbors just because they happen to be fulfilled by relationships with people of their own rather than the opposite gender.

As a Christian clergyman, the kind of oppression that disturbs me is the most that which is justified by resource to the old, "God made me do it" excuse. As a former Roman Catholic priest myself, may I point out that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has a long history of telling other people, without just cause, that they deserve to go to hell.

There is a little, if any justification in the scriptures for this bunch of old clergymen to threaten people with hell for sexual practices which they don't happen to approve of, including masturbation, marriage by clergy, family planning by laypeople and anything but total celibacy for those born homosexual.

One of the reasons that I left the Roman Catholic priesthood is that I can no longer maintain the lie that artificial birth control had to be condemned in public while being condoned in private. When is the clergy of the church going to be honest enough to either (a) admit that it's condemnation of artificial birth control has been wrong all these many years and the millions of faithful who practice it regularly are not and have never been at risk of eternal punishment by God or (b) insist that their teaching is correct and all those Catholics who practice artificial birth control are committing deadly sins and risking eternal damnation and as a result, they should either stay away from communion or get out of the Roman Catholic church all together.

Since the Catholic hierarchy has failed totally to persuade millions of heterosexual Catholics to avoid practicing artificial birth control, which is clear from the fact that Catholics have no more children than do other Americans, they are now embarking on the campaign to deny even non-Catholic homosexuals the right to have sex either outside or inside marriage.

Instead of allowing these frustrated old celibate clergymen to police non-Catholic homosexuals, show some backbone and tell them loud and clear to go back to their rectories and chancelleries and police the behavior of their own "celibate" priests.

If the Roman Catholic hierarchy had not been so distracted by private sexual behaviors during the last war, his website, which is liberalslikeChrist.org, web pages show that they would have opposed the mass killing of tens of millions of innocent people, including many homosexuals and excommunicated all the Roman Catholic dictators of the axis powers, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, the Roman Catholic Priest Dictator, Tieso, instead of urging the Roman Catholics in those countries to be loyal subjects of those murderers.

Thank you.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you.

CYNTHIA DuBUKE: You're welcome.

SEN. MCDONALD: You could probably do a fed-ex commercial too. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Representative Farr.

REP. FARR: Let me just make the observation. I think the tone of the thing today has been very good. I think it's unfortunate that we get into attacking other people and religion and I think that's not the tone we've tried to set here.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you, Representative Farr. Any other questions? I want to thank all of the members of the public for coming out today and testifying.

The mere fact that you are here at quarter of seven is testament to the strength of your opinions and I appreciate and I believe Representative Lawlor would join me in this. I appreciate your participation.

For those of you who would like to talk to your legislators individually, I would encourage you to seek out your representatives and senators and share with them your personal stories. That is, in fact, one of the most powerful educational tools that you could employ in your positions and in advance of the cause that you've testified on behalf today.

So I want to thank each and every one of you and Representative Lawlor, do you have any final comments?

REP. LAWLOR: Just to say thanks very much for your patience. It's been another interesting and informative day.

SEN. MCDONALD: And I want to thank all of the members who have had the stamina to be with us all day today. I appreciate it very much.

We are adjourned.

(Whereupon, the public hearing was adjourned.)