Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) acknowledged the good done by the Connecticut legislature in passing a civil union bill today but expressed disappointment that this important legislation came with a marriage restriction attached.

“Connecticut’s legislature has recognized the existence and reality of same-sex families, and has stepped up to the plate to provide those families with much-needed protections,” said Mary L. Bonauto, director of GLAD’s Civil Rights Project. “They have not chosen the simplest, fairest way to provide those protections – marriage – but we look forward to the time when Connecticut’s same-sex couples will be able to legally wed.”

GLAD Legal Director Gary Buseck added, "Thanks to the work of Love Makes A Family, more legislators and citizens understand the unfairness of denying marriage rights to committed same-sex couples. The discussion that’s happened around this legislation can lead to the end of marriage discrimination in Connecticut, whether through the Legislature and in the courts."

GLAD remains committed to achieving marriage equality in Connecticut through its lawsuit, Kerrigan & Mock v. Department Public Health, filed in New Haven Superior Court in August 2004. GLAD represent seven loving and committed same-sex couples who seek to marry in Connecticut.

While civil unions provide state-based legal rights, couples joined in them are even more likely to face discrimination against their relationships by other states, and cannot make any claim to the 1138 federal rights associated with marriage. When joined with a denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, as in Connecticut, they also impose a badge of inferiority on gay people and same-sex relationships.

Bonauto was the lead GLAD attorney in the successful marriage case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in Massachusetts. She is also counsel in Kerrigan & Mock v. Department of Public Health, with GLAD attorneys Bennett Klein, Karen Loewy and Jennifer Levi, Horton, Shields & Knox attorneys Kenneth Bartschi and Karen Dowd, New Haven attorney Maureen Murphy, and Annette Lamoreaux of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union.