Thursday, July 24, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover story: Extended family

How did activists score a major victory for gay rights in the Legislature? Quietly

By Lynnette Curtis

Partners Stephanie Washington and Kelly Woods share a peaceful, comfy northwest Las Vegas home where the combination of warm earth tones, African themes and scented candles creates an atmosphere much like the women themselves: casual, open, friendly. Woods is the quieter, more thoughtful of the two; Washington the vibrant, outgoing one. She gently encourages Woods to speak up by stroking her hair, kissing her cheek, holding her hand. Both women are smart, funny and affectionate. It's immediately obvious how close the two are, how protective of one another.

So it's easy to understand how worried Washington was when Woods was taken by ambulance to Desert Springs Hospital a couple of years ago after breaking her ankle while playing basketball. Like any concerned spouse, Washington raced to the hospital, filled out all the necessary paperwork, gave Woods' health insurance information to a hospital admissions clerk, and asked to join her partner in the emergency room. Then, Washington says, the clerk asked her how she was related to Woods. "I said, `I don't know what you'd call her, but she's my wife,'" Washington remembers.

Washington says she was told she couldn't be in the emergency room with Woods because she wasn't a legal spouse or immediate family member. "The clerk told me to say I was [Woods'] sister so I could be with her," Washington says. "But I wasn't going to lie. So I couldn't go back with her. I was thinking, `Oh, my God. What's going on? She's in so much pain and back there by herself.'"

And just a year before, when Woods took Washington--who was suffering from kidney stones--to University Medical Center, she says she too was told she'd have to remain in the waiting room while Washington was examined. "I saw her face," Washington says. "The pain in her face took over the pain I was feeling in my stomach."

Now, thanks to a new Nevada law called Senate Bill 386, neither woman should again have to face being separated from her hurting loved one. Washington and Woods were the first to take advantage of the law that gives unmarried couples--including same-sex couples--the same hospital visitation rights as their married counterparts. SB386 also allows individuals to easily designate someone other than an immediate family member or spouse to make decisions about their burial, cremation and organ donation. And, for the first time, the list of people who can make decisions after death now includes someone who owns a home in joint tenancy at the time of death, without any requirement of a legal family relationship.

Before legislators and Gov. Kenny Guinn quietly passed the law in June, unmarried couples in Nevada didn't have a legal leg to stand on when it came to caring for their partners' health care needs or making arrangements for them when they died. Local equal rights advocates say it's about time. Even without taking into account the effect on same-sex couples like Washington and Woods, in a state like Nevada--where many people live with little or no family nearby--the new law is practically a no-brainer. "This legislation represents an important step forward in the equal treatment of all Nevadans, regardless of the legal status of their relationships," says Ande Rice, chair of Equal Rights Nevada.

Still, it was mostly gay rights advocates who pushed the legislation along, in a successful behind-the-scenes lobbying effort. So, what's really surprising about the passage of SB386 is it enjoyed unanimous bipartisan support in a Legislature hopelessly deadlocked on other issues, came less than a year after Nevadans voted overwhelmingly to ban same-sex marriages and was kept very hush-hush.

How a bill becomes a

law--the smart way

"We didn't want it to be just a gay rights issue," says Dale Erquiaga, a vice president at the advertising and public relations firm R&R Partners. Erquiaga, who is gay, wrote the original draft of SB386. "By not having gay rights activists testify [at hearings], legislators could focus on the human rights issues. So it wasn't offensive to those who don't want gay-related legislation."

In other words, the low-key approach gave conservative lawmakers cover to support the bill. "The issue resonated with those whose constituents consist of a large number of unmarried older folks," Erquiaga says. "They could forget about sexual orientation. It was a way for them to say, `I'm doing this for my constituents. If it happens to positively affect others, so be it.'"

And it gave even notoriously conservative politicians such as GOP Assemblyman Bob Beers something to cheer about. "I didn't take same-sex couples into account," Beers says. "It's not about sex. It's just a good idea. When you're sick in the hospital, it helps to have good friends around you. I have older constituents in Sun City who are living in sin because, if they marry, one or both of their incomes will be reduced. That's the way we do retirement benefits in America. I have nothing against same-sex couples being allowed to visit, but that wasn't where I was coming from."

Erquiaga was initially asked to draft the bill by R&R Chief Executive Billy Vassiliadis, a key Nevada Democratic strategist and political insider. Vassiliadis was involved last fall in the opposition to Question 2--the initiative to define marriage as strictly between a man and woman. He challenged conservatives--who claimed they weren't merely attacking gay people but just wanted to protect heterosexual marriages--to support a measure that would give hospital visitation rights to unmarried couples. "Billy said, `Figure out how to create this bill without violating the idea of a civil union or spouse--how to make this idea into law,'" Erquiaga says.

So Erquiaga worked with Nevada's only openly gay lawmaker, Assemblyman David Parks, to draft and introduce the bill. Parks is also careful to downplay the idea that the bill's passage is simply a gay rights victory. "Certainly same-gender couples will find it advantageous," he says. "But there are a tremendous number of other individuals here in Las Vegas without relatives. Sometimes they're totally left on their own out there. Someone else needs to handle things related to hospitalization and end-of-life issues. It was a noncontroversial bill."

And by keeping the controversy out of it, the bill's backers also managed to keep it relatively quiet. They hoped this would give SB386 a better chance of surviving in the Legislature. "We've done it both ways," says Erquiaga, referring to last fall's very public debate over Question 2. "This is how it worked in the end. This was a lesson for the gay community about how to make legislation the smart way."

"It passed so quietly because it wasn't an activist issue," says Lee Plotkin, Nevada coordinator for the Human Rights Campaign, a national lobbying and civil rights organization for gays and lesbians. "It went under the radar for virtually everybody. Sometimes the result is more important than the process."

The usual suspect

So, SB386 turns out to be a win-win law for everybody. Conservatives say it helps their older, unmarried constituents. Gay rights advocates are elated to have won for same-sex couples some of the rights taken for granted by those in heterosexual relationships. Everybody's happy, right? Well, not entirely.

Richard Ziser, chairman of the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, is a little suspicious about the motives of those who wrote and introduced SB386. (Ziser, you may remember, was the leader of Nevada's anti-gay marriage campaign.) Also, while not necessarily opposed to the new law, he questions whether it was necessary. "Really all this bill did was create a form people could fill out in advance and put on file, very similar to the medical power of attorney," Ziser says. "The patient's bill of rights already gave them that right. It was pretty clear. They could've accomplished any of this without legislation."

Erquiaga disagrees. "Richard Ziser is fortunate that he can afford an attorney to draft these things for him," he says. "Young couples and senior citizens on fixed incomes may not have the funds to hire an attorney."

SB386 allows individuals to designate through a simple letter who should be granted the same hospital visitation rights as legally defined family members. The second half of the bill lays out a series of affidavits that, when notarized, allow an individual to appoint the person who will make decisions about burial and organ donation. Notarization costs are usually minimal. "Any rich person could have done this before the bill," says Beers. "But the last thing I would ever wish on a sick person is to have to go see a lawyer."

Parks says the bill will save unmarried couples considerable sums of money. "I've talked to attorneys who draw up contractual agreements between same-gender partners, and it can range in the thousands of dollars," he says.

And Plotkin says Ziser would be happy to deny gay people access to their loved ones in critical situations. "He won't say that," Plotkin says, "because that makes him sound like the truly mean person he is."

Ziser also seems to think backers of the original version of SB386 were attempting to sneak in language that would redefine marriage and family. "We didn't agree with the original bill," he says, "because it had family-redefining language in it. We anticipated that. The original language said you could appoint a member of your family. But that doesn't include a partner. That would have changed the definition of family, and would have been used as a precedent to affect other areas of the law. You can't pick and choose who becomes a family member. There are specific regulations, under the law, about that."

Erquiaga admits his original draft did define family as "anyone who plays a significant role in a person's life." "I thought that was a great definition," he says. "It didn't occur to me that anyone would have a problem with it. But the Question 2 people were afraid of that definition, so we removed it from the bill."

One small step

for gaykind

Nevada's SB386 has become part of what seems to be a recent larger national and international leaning toward gay rights issues. Just last month, a Canadian appeals court in Ontario struck down a ban on same-sex marriage, making Canada the third country in the world to legally recognize gay unions. Same-sex couples already were allowed to wed in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In the United States, Vermont allows same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage, but calls them "civil unions" instead of "marriages." California recently passed a law to provide similar benefits to domestic partners, but still doesn't allow gays to legally wed. In Massachusetts, Supreme Judicial Court judges are overdue to issue a decision on whether to make the state the first in the country to actually legalize same-sex marriage. And let's not forget, of course, that the U.S. Supreme Court just struck down Texas sodomy laws and nullified similar laws in other states. (Nevada's sodomy law was repealed in 1993--relatively early in comparison to other states.)

While all of this naturally pleases gay rights advocates, it angers staunch conservatives like Ziser. "[The U.S. Supreme Court]) has created a right to privacy which doesn't exist in the Constitution, and expanded it into other realms," Ziser says. "The problem is that it's going to be hard to stop. States won't have a say in what laws they can pass in other areas. We're going to see a whole lot of things opening up here. It will be very problematic for states. It's the encroachment of the federal government."

But Plotkin thinks Ziser should be "dancing in the street" about the recent Supreme Court ruling. "It will give people like [Ziser] gainful employment for many years. He can continue to make a living, an entire industry, out of attacking gay people."

Spreading the word

Kelly Woods and Stephanie Washington are proud and relieved to be the first same-sex couple in Nevada to sign the forms provided by SB386 that will guarantee them the same hospital visitation rights as any heterosexual couple. But they're also worried that not enough people--or hospitals--are aware of the new law.

Indeed, Desert Springs Hospital Marketing Director Lori Harris says she knows nothing about the law requiring hospitals to honor a simple patient letter when determining visitation rights. "This is the first I've heard of this," she says.

But University Medical Center Community Relations Coordinator Cheryl Persinger maintains that the county hospital has always been lenient about visitation rights. "We allow a person to accompany the patient into the emergency room, regardless of their relationship, unless it's overcrowded and space is limited," she says. "And we allow one family member to stay the night with a patient in intensive care. If it's an unmarried or same-sex partner, that's fine. We take into consideration each person as an individual." Persinger says SB386 won't change much at UMC. "Now we'll have the law behind us," she says. "We will abide by that."

Woods says the fact that SB386 passed so quietly was "both a benefit and a downside." "Now we need to get the word out," she says. In that spirit, Equal Rights Nevada is teaming up with Bunker Mortuary and The Center gay and lesbian community center for a week in August to provide SB386 forms and access to a notary. "It's not just for same-sex couples," says center director Bob Bellis. "Everyone's welcome." (Couples can pick up the paperwork at The Center Aug. 18-22 from 6 to 7 p.m. and Aug. 23 from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, call The Center at 733-9800.)

"This is such a wonderful victory," Washington says. "I hope everybody who can benefit from this bill--senior citizens, same-sex couples, unmarried heterosexuals--will take advantage of it, and that now no partners will ever have to die alone in a hospital."