Chairman Taylor, Mr. Moran, and other members of the Subcommittee, good afternoon. My name is Carl Schmid and I am appearing here today on behalf of the Capital Area Log Cabin Club, and a coalition of other groups and individuals who are concerned with certain provisions that seem to arise each year in the D.C. appropriation bill. Specifically, I would like to discuss a prohibition on the use of funds to implement the District's Health Care Benefits Expansion Act, commonly referred to as our Domestic Partnership law, and secondly, attempts to prevent unmarried couples from adopting children.

Before I discuss these issues I want to begin by thanking you for allowing the citizens of the District to appear before this Subcommittee. This is the first time that we have had the opportunity to formally present our views to you. I would also like to personally thank you for tackling the difficult financial and management issues facing the District. As citizens of the District we too, are disturbed that our local officials have poorly managed our Nation's capital-a place that we also call home.

The people who make their home in this city are quite diverse, and includes a very large gay and lesbian population. We live in neighborhoods, renovate homes, work in offices, own businesses, pay taxes, spend money, and vote just like anyone else. I, for example, do government affairs work for the oil and natural gas industry, own a home, and am politically active in the D.C. Republican Party, and in Log Cabin, which represents gay Republicans. We are fully integrated into society and are welcomed by our neighbors. We care about the state of the District and are carefully watching what you do because we, like everyone else, will be affected. What we do not understand is why the Congress continually becomes involved in such local social issues as domestic partnership and adoption that do not impact the finances of the District. In fact, allowing adoptions by unmarried couples actually saves the government money since children are taken out of D.C.'s costly foster care program. I suppose what I am trying to say is, "please, leave us alone".

This year as you consider the D.C. Appropriation bill, we urge you to oppose any effort to prevent the District from implementing its Domestic Partnership program and allowing unmarried couples to adopt.

Domestic Partnership

In 1992, the District passed the Health Care Benefits Expansion Act, which became law after its Congressional review period. The law establishes a domestic partnership program, and allows District employees to purchase health insurance at their own cost for their domestic partner. This should not be confused with same-sex marriage. The only benefits a domestic partner receives are visitation rights at nursing homes and hospitals, and depending on the employer, it may entitle you to other rights and benefits such as sick, parental, and bereavement leave. As you can see, this is an extremely limited program.

Private employers around the country are establishing domestic partnership programs as are numerous cities. Why then does Congress prevent the District from implementing our program while other cities are allowed to implement theirs? Is this really an issue that the Congress should be addressing? To me it seems like the wishes of organized groups outside the District are trying to impose their thinking on us. I urge you not to include language in this year's appropriation bill that would prevent funding of this program. At a minimum, we would request that you allow the District to use its own funds to implement the law. Further, I would ask you to resist any effort to repeal the law, as one member of the House attempted to do in 1995.

Adoption

Another area where the Congress has attempted to interfere with local D.C. social issues is in adoption proceedings. As you know, Congress has traditionally stayed out of family law matters, since family law, including adoption, has been handled at the state and local level. Things changed two years ago when one member of the appropriations committee, at the urging of groups outside the District, tried to attach a rider to the D.C. Appropriation bill that would prevent unmarried couples from adopting a child. Fortunately, these attempts failed two years in a row.

Adoptions do not happen over night, but only after careful planning, and a lengthy report is conducted that includes a home study, personal references, and financial record checks all in order to determine if the prospective parents are fit to adopt. The final decision rests with the courts after they conclude that the adoption would be in the best interest of the child, as is the case across the country. Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia allow single-parents to adopt, and to date, twenty-one states, including D.C., allow second-parent adoptions. In these instances there is an adoption of a child by a second adult who accepts full legal responsibility for the financial care and raising of the child with the original parent.

While you may not personally agree with these court decisions, I hope we can agree that these are not issues of federal legislative concern, but decisions that are best left to local family courts to decide on a case by case basis.

The introduction of this local issue into the appropriations process in the past has significantly delayed passage of the D.C. bill. Two years ago the issue, along with others, caused the bill to languish in a House and Senate conference committee for several months, and resulted in the shutdown of the District government. In the end it was dropped from the bill. Last year, the issue was raised again, but in order to not repeat the past, Committee Chair Livingston, then Subcommittee Chair Walsh, along with other members of both parties spoke out against it. They argued that the issue had no place in the bill, and the amendment was soundly defeated.

Mr. Chairman, the issue still does not belong in the appropriations bill. This year we hope you will urge your colleagues not to offer such amendments, and if they do, that you will vigorously oppose them. If such extraneous measures are attached to the bill, you can be assured we will work to delete them, as we have in the past.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to present our views to you today. We look forward to working with you in the future, and wish you well as you address the real problems of the District of Columbia. Thank you.