PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Aronda Kirby and Digit Murphy were once married to men, received tax breaks for married couples and were legally permitted to take family leave if their husbands or children got sick. The two women lost those protections when they came out as lesbians, divorced their husbands and set up a new household together with their six children.
Now, with couples like Murphy and Kirby in mind, some advocates who previously fought for "marriage or nothing" are shifting strategies.
Rather than fighting to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, they're instead lobbying for the protections marriage provides. Those who follow the movement say bills introduced this year in Rhode Island and Washington state could signal a broader change in tactics, one that some gay marriage advocates worry could undercut more than a decade of work.
"We've had all the rights, so we want them back," Murphy said. "We don't care how we get them."
Gay rights proponents have accepted less than marriage before, though not by choice. Court decisions forced New Jersey and Vermont to adopt civil unions. Connecticut's legislature passed a civil union bill even though many gay rights activists there had pressed for marriage.
"It's very new," said Washington state Sen. Edward Murray, a gay man who represents a heavily gay area in Seattle where his constituents until recently frowned on anything but marriage. "If I had suggested this strategy a year or two years ago, I would have been run out of my district."
In Rhode Island, advocates have introduced bills to legalize gay marriage every year since 1997, but they've gone nowhere. So this year, in addition to filing marriage legislation, they hope to have some success with six new bills that focus on incremental rights rather than the label of marriage.
One would allow same-sex parents to take family leave if their partner or partner's children fall ill. Another bill would give gay men and women the right to plan their partners' funerals.
The legislation would also protect domestic partners from testifying against each other in court and allow a gay spouse to file a wrongful death lawsuit if his partner dies.
In Washington, similar rights would be granted under a domestic partnership bill. Gay leaders like Murray adopted the approach after losing a court case they hoped would lead to gay marriage.
Gay marriage advocates in both states say they're still committed to marriage and will still support marriage bills -- even if those efforts are likely to fail. They describe their plan as a two-pronged squeeze, testing whether lawmakers who summarily reject gay marriage will approve rights that enjoy more popular support.
"The holdup is about marriage, not about the protections," said Jenn Steinfeld, who leads the advocacy group Marriage Equality RI. "So we're giving them an opportunity to show us that."
But the shift has critics both in and outside the gay rights movement.
Evan Wolfson, a gay-rights lawyer who heads the national advocacy group Freedom to Marry, cautions that anything short of marriage relegates gays and lesbians to second-class status. He said a two-pronged approach might be temporarily appropriate in some places, but he questioned whether advocates in Rhode Island and Washington pushed hard enough before switching tactics.
"What I am against is us going into the conversation bargaining against ourselves," he said. "You don't even get half a loaf by asking for half a loaf."
Even though civil unions and individual laws can grant gay couples some protection, lawmakers who support them are deliberately setting up a lesser system, he said.
"Clearly people are under-optimistic," Wolfson said, "and sometimes they tailor their strategies accordingly and sometimes they shoot lower than they have to."
The Rev. Bernard Healey, a lobbyist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, said the church would oppose any legislation viewed as a gradual step toward marriage -- which is exactly what leaders of Marriage Equality RI say they have in mind.
The fight over same-sex marriage tends to differ by state. Gay rights advocates in New York are still pushing for a marriage bill because Gov. Elliot Spitzer has said he's supportive. Basic Rights Oregon is pursuing an anti-discrimination law and a civil union system because voters banned gay marriage in 2004.
But the tactic could be applied in places beyond Rhode Island and Washington, said Carrie Evans, until recently the legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C.
Despite initial victories, including the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, all but four other states -- New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and Rhode Island -- have amended their constitutions or passed laws banning gay marriage.
There are a few states -- notably California, Connecticut and Maryland -- where lawsuits are pending that ask judges to rule on same-sex marriage. But Evans said she'd be surprised if gay marriage legislation gets a floor vote in any state this year.
"I think with legislators, just like the public, people don't change their minds on marriage equality ... overnight," she said. "Often time, we have to bring people along with us and that may be the incremental approach in some states."
Back in Rhode Island, Aronda Kirby falls somewhere in the middle of that philosophical spectrum. Although she's not sure she'd remarry, she wants the same legal options as any heterosexual. In the meantime, she wants lawmakers to address her here-and-now concerns about taxes, property inheritance and child custody.
"I don't want to waste my energy arguing about the argument," she said. "Just get the rights."
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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