By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
In any other year, the hunt for revenue would be front and center in the minds of state legislators. And it certainly is in the minds of community organizations that advocate on behalf of the poor and the disabled.
But the attention thus far in this year’s legislative session in Olympia has been the quest for same-sex marriage. As JTNews reported in November, many local Jewish clergy and organizations, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Jewish Family Service, the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel at the University of Washington, have publicly advocated in favor of same-sex marriage.
Ninety-six people testified before the Senate Government Operations, Tribal Relations and Elections Committee on Monday regarding Senate Bill 6239. If passed, the current domestic-partnership law, which encompasses benefits for same-sex couples, will become valid only for couples age 62 or older, whether in same- or opposite-sex relationships, and same-sex partnerships for couples under 62 would automatically be converted to marriages by 2014 if the couple does not marry voluntarily. The measure is expected to easily pass the House, and the Senate secured the 25 votes it needs to pass the bill earlier this week. A vote was not scheduled as of press time.
Rabbi Jonathan Singer of Temple Beth Am in Seattle, who has been performing same-sex ceremonies for 15 years, said couples unable to marry have been relegated to second-class status. But he and his fellow clergy’s inability to civilly bind the religious ceremony is also an issue, he said.
“I, along with many other religious representatives, believe that the state’s discriminating not only against same-sex couples, but against the freedom of our religious expression,” he testified before the committee.
Sen. Ed Murray (D—Seattle), the primary sponsor of the bill, testified that for religious entities opposed to same-sex marriage, “no religion will be barred from deciding how they want to marry, nor will they be held legally liable under this legislation for making those decisions.”
As far as the budget is concerned, community organizations are very concerned. Like she has done for the past several budget cycles, Governor Christine Gregoire has proposed cuts to grants for low-income families and residents on disability programs, as well as to the state’s Basic Health insurance program.
“Because this is now the third straight year of a budget deficit, we’re continuing to work on making sure the social-service safety net isn’t eviscerated for the people who need it most,” said Zach Carstensen, the Jewish Federation’s director of government affairs. “We can’t just make reforms and cuts anymore. We need to find some new revenue.”
At this point, a working group in Olympia on which Carstensen sits is recommending that everything should be on the table, “from sales tax to securitization to closing tax preferences.”
Ken Weinberg, CEO of Jewish Family Service, said he would agree that the state should look at a modest, graduated income tax, though he doesn’t expect to see one in his lifetime.
“I think it takes real courage to do that,” Weinberg said. “It feels like we’ve got a state that’s falling apart. I don’t want it to fall apart. We need more money.”
For JFS, which provides many of the social services on the state’s chopping block, the question of where the money will come from is at the top of its leaders’ minds.
“If we need to cut expenses, how would we go about doing that?” Weinberg said.
Despite the fact that indicators show the recession has ended, JFS is still seeing increases in its demand for its food bank and money so people can afford rent and utilities.
Though Weinberg feels like things may be improving beyond his own agency, “I have not seen, here, the economy turning a corner,” he said.
Weinberg added that the state’s legislators’ choices will negatively affect the people who most need help, as they did long before this recession began.
“I don’t think anyone should rest easy after they make those [choices],” he said. “I think sleep should be lost until we’re able to reinstate those programs and increase them.”
Senate Bill 6068, bi-partisan legislation supported by the Jewish Federation and various Jewish communal agencies, was written in response to the December death on Mt. Rainier of Brian Grobois, an Orthodox Jewish hiker from New York.
The Pierce County coroner’s office found bruises on Grobois’s body it felt were worthy of examination, but his family’s objections to the defiling of the body, a violation of Jewish law, led to a last-minute injunction to stop an autopsy.
“It is the Jewish belief that the soul continues to live on after death, and the body is sacred and must return to the earth whole and complete,” testified Rabbi Zalman Heber of Chabad of Pierce County before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 17.
Heber worked with the Grobois family and helped them obtain legal counsel while they were in Washington to retrieve Brian’s body to bury him in Israel.
The Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners opposes the bill.
“I think this bill would substantially hinder my ability to do what I do now, which is compromise with families, educate families, do the work that needs to be done to ascertain the cause and manner of death,” testified Whatcom County’s medical examiner Gary Goldfogel.
Goldfogel, himself an observant Jew, said he is “neither insensitive nor ignorant of the burial traditions and the religious concerns of Orthodox Jews and Muslims.” When issues of religious conflict have arisen he said, “we have always been able to sit down and work it out.”
But the Federation’s Carstensen said his research, which included conversations with rabbis from different denominations, medical examiners and others who work with families of the deceased, found the medical examiner always ended up performing the autopsy.
“The Jewish beliefs and the sanctity of the body took a back seat to the medical examiner’s need or desire to perform an autopsy,” he said.
Carstensen said this state’s legislation was modeled after New York’s law, which he called “the gold standard,” but that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee met with rabbis, imams and medical examiners this week to make the bill’s intent more clear. Regardless, legislation is needed, he said, because the current system does not allow for families to have a say in the process.
“The default is to cut, poke and prod and ask questions later,” Carstensen said. “If someone has to go to court to say, “˜Hey look, my rights, my religious liberties ensconced in our state’s constitution are being overridden here,’ if someone has to come to court every time that that arises, that’s a system that doesn’t work.”