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Tom Callan and Richard Piatt reporting Salt Lake City passed a domestic partner registry. The Utah Legislature tried to undo the domestic partner registry by passing Senate Bill 267 through the Senate's Health and Human Services Committee this morning.
SB267 would take the power to create programs like the domestic partner registry away from cities like Salt Lake. Lawmakers say they're trying to stop the "homosexual agenda" from advancing or creating "a different class of people."
Lawmakers are concerned that Salt Lake City's domestic partner registry violates Amendment 3, the Utah Constitutional definition of a one-man-one-woman marriage.
Lawmakers focused on same-sex couples who would benefit from the registry, but Salt Lake City reports that 78 percent of the families taking advantage of the benefit are not same-sex couples. For example, Melanie Schertz lives with her mother and her daughter, Caitlin. The only way everyone in their family can afford health insurance, not to mention their home, is with the benefit.
"So what we have is a partner registry that's in violation of the very code it claims to be empowered by, and a policy that mimics Utah's marriage recognition policy to a T," said Sen. Chris Buttars, sponsor of SB267.
Medical and other benefits are readily available already, he says.
Christy Gleave was barred from comforting her critically injured partner at a local hospital. She finds the bill in question offensive. Gleave, of the Salt Lake Human Rights Commission, says, "I think a lot of things are said to make people afraid of people like me and families like mine."
Buttars and those who support him say the registry is a way to get around the state law and sneak gay rights into mainstream Utah.
Mayor Ralph Becker says the bill--among other things--invades a city's right to make its own policy. Becker says, "It does concern me when I see the Legislature considering legislation that clearly overrides the clear will of our community."
The bill passed that Senate Committee today.
All who voted in favor of it considered the issue important enough to be debated before the full Senate.
