Wisconsin LGBTs Confident of Court Victory for Domestic Partnerships

Monday, August 3, marked a special day for LGBT rights advocates in Wisconsin, when county clerks around the state registered their first same-sex domestic partnerships under a new registry passed earlier this year as part of Gov. Jim Doyle's new budget.

Not everyone greeted the news happily. The Wisconsin Family Action (WFA) lobby group has filed a petition with the state Supreme Court to challenge the registry's constitutionality.

The WFA, fronted by president Julaine Appling, filed the petition with the Supreme Court on July 23. Appling, along with representatives from the First Freedoms Foundation and Alliance Defense Fund, claim the registry undermines marriage.

She cites the voter-approved 2006 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and anything "substantially similar to marriage" as principal among the reasons for rescinding the registry's extension of basic rights to gay and lesbian couples.

"This is an assault on the people, the state constitution, the democratic process, and the institution of marriage, which the people voted so recently and so overwhelmingly to protect," read an WFA press release published on the organization's Web site. WFA staff did not return EDGE's request for further comment on the lawsuit.

"[We] will vigorously defend the definition of marriage that has been affirmed by the people of Wisconsin and existed even before Wisconsin was founded," continued the statement. "This is an egregious misuse of power by elected officials."

In response to the petition's assertions, proponents of the domestic partner registry have remained steadfast. They state the registry's approximately 43 protections fall far short of the more than 200 rights and responsibilities that come with being legally married in Wisconsin, nor the well over 1,000 federal rights granted to married couples.

"If you just look at the protections provided, it is not even close to similar, let alone substantially similar, to marriage, and that is what they would need to prove in the court," said Christopher Clark, a Lambda Legal attorney who is working on the case.

"But I think the question more important than that, is what do people understand domestic partners to be and mean," Clark continued. "I think marriage has a very unique meaning and don't think anyone in Wisconsin or anywhere else is fooled into thinking someone entering into a domestic partnership is married. They understand the distinction and I think people are a bit smarter than what this lawsuit is letting on."

Both Clark and Katie Belanger, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, the state's main gay-rights group, are skeptical that the petition could successfully void the basic protections offered by the registry, which include rights to hospital visitation and to request time-off to care for a sick or injured partners. They felt the petition's content was telling of the beliefs motivating he conservative groups behind the effort.

"We're confident we'll win this battle. It'll be a long process, but we're ready for it," Belanger shared. Her organization was active in lobbying for the registry's passage. "It's becoming clear what their true intentions are ... Their intentions behind all of this are to single out a group of individuals who are just trying to take care of each other."

"Let's not pretend we don't know what's going on here," Clark added. "These people have made it their business to attack the legal rights of gay and lesbian citizens across the nation. That's their mission. They can cloak this in terms of protecting 'traditional marriage' but the truth is they don't like gay people and want to strip them of very basic, non-controversial legal rights."

Despite the legal battle ahead, Belanger remains optimstic, particularly as she discussed the approximately 200 same-sex couples that have already registered as domestic partners statewide this week.

She noted the registry was important not only to those registering, but also the state's LGBT community as a whole. Its passage marks the first "pro-fairness" legislation passed in the state in 27 years, according to Belanger.

"It's really heartening for so many people seeing Wisconsin moving in the right direction again. It's taken a long time to get here but I think it's given the gay and lesbian community a renewed sense of hope that Wisconsin is a fair and decent state," she said. "Even though domestic partnerships fall short of full equality, people understand that this was an important step for our state."

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, currently out of session, has yet to take on the suit. Should the court reject the case, Appling and company are expected to pursue their challenge through trial courts.