Canadian wedding bells ring for island gay couples

• Amendment hasn't ended Hawai'i debate

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

Hawai'i activist Bill Woods will marry his partner Aug. 31 in Vancouver. Advertiser library photo • 1993

On Aug. 31, he and Lance Bateman will be the second gay couple from Hawai'i to make public their wedding in Canada. It's the culmination of a 13-year process for Woods, an activist who said he chose Hawai'i as the place to launch an attack on laws barring gay marriage.

"It was a big enterprise," he said. "I knew it was going to take a long time to get married. ... (At the time) I didn't see gay marriage for me, but I wanted to help other couples do it."

Since 1995, the Hawai'i Gay Marriage Bureau has tracked gay couples who want their unions recognized. It lists about 3,600 couples nationwide and 350 from Hawai'i already in unions. Hundreds of them are planning to come to Canada, Woods said, including several from the Islands.

Last week, President Bush and the Vatican spoke out against gay unions, with Bush saying that marriage as a legal institution should be limited to "a man and a woman," and that his administration would study ways to enforce that principle as law. But Woods and Bateman waved off the latest opposition.

Bush "is not going to make a difference in our lives," said Bateman, an operations manager for Bishop Insurance. "We decided long ago, if it's ever really, truly legal someplace, we'd do it."

Among others from Hawai'i eying a Great North wedding are Martin Rice of Kaua'i, legislative chairman for the Civil Union-Civil Rights Movement.

Rice and his partner of 30 years have discussed a Canada marriage. However, Rice said they're waiting until they can marry in the Anglican Church where Rice was baptized in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Woods and Bateman follow Bill Schuyler and Ron Rinaldi in traveling to Canada to marry. Reached by phone the day after Bush made his statement, Schuyler said he wasn't surprised by the president's proposal, but he declined to wade into the public debate.

"We didn't want to be the poster boys for this," said Schuyler, who married Rinaldi July 19 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The two men have spent 28 years together.

Woods, however, is happy to lend his profile. In 1990, he set up the Gay and Lesbian Education and Advocacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that solicited gay couples in Hawai'i who wanted the right to be married. Three same-sex couples, in December of that year, attempted to get marriage licenses from the state Department of Health. When they were refused, a movement was born.

The next year, civil rights lawyer Dan Foley, who today is a state appeals judge, filed a lawsuit that won a landmark favorable ruling from the Hawai'i Supreme Court. That led to a decision by Circuit Judge Kevin Chang in 1996 which would have made Hawai'i the state first in the country that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry.

A state constitutional amendment in 1998 had 70 percent of voters coming down against same-sex marriage, and a state high court decision the next year effectively ended the advancement of the movement here.

However, the push continued on other fronts, and Woods attributes some of the momentum to the Hawai'i court decisions, which he calls "profound."

"Since that time, the actual verdicts have been used in 170 countries to produce marriage or marriage-like rights for domestic union," he said.

Canada is the third country to allow same-sex unions. It is the first allowing nonresident same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses, which first became available in June.

As soon as that happened, the Hawai'i Gay Marriage Bureau went into high gear, notifying its long list of interested couples about their prospects, explaining how to obtain a marriage license and telling them which documents to bring, Woods said.

Bateman and Woods are calling their Aug. 31 ceremony, which will occur on their eighth anniversary of being together, "the recognition of our relationship with a wedding ceremony."

"You fall in love, and want the recognition of your family and their support," said Woods. "The legal thing sometimes helps you get through the bumps.

"In the gay community, there is no booklet out there saying 'This is what you do.' We're inventing our community's marriage system, how it's being supported by family. ... Our marriage has much more implications."

At the terrace area of the Vancouver hotel where the wedding will take place, media people are being asked to stay outside, though they'll be invited in during the reception, Woods said. He added that he's been fielding calls from reporters all over the country and from Canada since going public with the news Thursday.

"It's exciting on that level," said Woods, "but it's about the (wedding) day."

Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Amendment hasn't ended Hawai'i debate

What's the legal status for gay marriage in Hawai'i? That's still being debated.

Brent White, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union's Honolulu office, said any marriage in Canada should be afforded protection in Hawai'i.

Hawai'i has recognized traditional, opposite-sex marriages from Canada so far, White said, and the state "has no laws that would bar the state from recognizing" same-sex ones.

However, other lawyers have questioned whether under U.S. law, courts and governments should recognize gay marriage if it violates public policy. White says, "No public policy is being violated. In fact, public policy forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation."

However, foes of same-sex marriage like Honolulu Councilman Mike Gabbard disagree.

"It's not an issue, because these are foreign marriages," said Gabbard, the founder and president of Alliance for Traditional Marriage and Values, which initially lobbied for a 1998 constitutional amendment that gave the Legislature power to prohibit gay unions.

"It would be a travesty of justice to basically spit in the face of those who voted against recognizing gay marriages," Gabbard said. "Attorneys are looking for ways to force Hawai'i to recognize gay marriages, but I think that's not going to happen."

The Rev. Vaughn Beckman, senior pastor of First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, in Makiki who performs ceremonies for gay couples, said if couples have made a commitment, it doesn't matter what the courts say.

But Beckman acknowledged legal status continues to play a role in these couples' lives.

"Are they going to be recognized when one's in the hospital?" he asked.

"There are other issues — not about money, but about their abilities to function and support each other — that are more important."