WASHINGTON - The Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation yesterday that is designed to prevent gay marriages, sending the election-year measure to President Clinton and a promised signature, while narrowly defeating another bill that would have outlawed job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
After a relatively subdued day-long debate on the two measures, the Senate voted 85 to 14 to approve the same-sex marriage bill and then defeated the job-discrimination bill by the narrowest of margins, 50 to 49, in the first vote Congress has had on the issue.
Sen. James Jeffords (R-Vt.) a co-sponsor of the employment-discrimination bill, said the difference in the two votes was an accurate gauge of Americans' readiness to accept gay relationships as opposed to their willingness to accept gay individuals in the workplace. "What we did today genuinely reflects the public's feelings," he said.
No Republicans opposed the same-sex marriage bill while 32 Democrats supported it. On the job-discrimination bill, eight Republicans, including three who are not seeking re-election this year, voted for it while five Democrats, all but one from the South, voted against it.
A Clinton administration statement said the president, who courted the gay vote four years ago, will sign the same-sex marriage bill because he "has long opposed same-sex marriage." The statement stressed Clinton's opposition to "discrimination against any group of Americans, including gay and lesbian individuals." Clinton endorsed barring job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the 1992 campaign and Vice President Al Gore was ready to return to Washington from campaign stops in Pennsylvania to break a tie.
That was not necessary as Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.) missed yesterday's votes because his 33-year-old son had 12-hour cancer surgery in Little Rock Monday, his spokesperson said. Pryor was committed to vote for the bill, according to supporters.
Even if the Senate had approved the measure, House leaders were unlikely to schedule a vote on it before quitting for the year in the next few weeks.
The same-sex marriage measure, which supporters call the "Defense of Marriage Act," says no state would have to recognize a same-sex marriage granted by another state.
The bill also for the first time defines marriage in federal law as the "legal union between one man and one woman" and defines "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."
As a result, even if a state were to recognize gay marriages, those partners would not be eligible for benefits as spouses under such federal programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or veterans' programs.
Conservative activists said yesterday's votes - eight weeks to the day before Election Day - would boost the chances of GOP nominee Bob Dole. "This is a huge string of victories for the pro-family movement," said Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition. "These are the bricks in the wall that allow you to build the turnout of religious conservatives."
Gay-rights advocates, meanwhile, claimed victory in the strong vote against discrimination based on sexual orientation. "When you look at where we started and then to come within a breath of victory, this is a powerful movement in terms of the overall civil-rights movement for all gay Americans," said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group.
"We're on the move - we've got momentum," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) a sponsor of the job-discrimination bill.
Job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is legal in 41 states.
No state currently recognizes gay marriages. Fifteen states have enacted laws barring same-sex marriages and similar measures are pending in two others, according to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights group. In addition, GOP Govs. Kirk Fordice of Mississippi and Fob James Jr. of Alabama signed executive orders last month banning gay marriages in their states.
The bill's supporters say it is needed because of a 3-to-1 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling in May 1993 that the state may not deny same-sex couples marriage licenses without a "compelling" reason. The court returned the case to a lower court for a trial, which began yesterday.
If Hawaii were to allow gay marriages, these lawmakers argue, other states would be forced to recognize them because the Constitution requires each state to recognize the "public acts, records and judicial proceedings" of all other states. The Constitution also allows Congress to limit that by law.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) called the bill "a pre-emptive measure to make sure that a handful of judges in a single state cannot impose a radical social agenda upon an entire nation."
Yesterday's debate lacked the passion and vitriol that preceded July's 342 to 67 House vote approving the measure, during which many House Republicans strongly condemned homosexuality - and gay men and women - as immoral. At one point yesterday, Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) reminded her colleagues that behind every discussion of homosexuality were real men and women who wanted to live their lives without interference.
Instead, the Senate debate focused on the traditional definition of marriage, the rights of states to make that definition for themselves and the question of federal benefits for spouses.