The chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, who intends to introduce a measure to establish domestic partnerships — allowing any couple, including same-sex couples to enjoy all rights and responsibilities that state law gives to married couples — says he believes there are enough votes in the Legislature to pass a bill.

Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, is optimistic because of election gains by progressive Democrats this year in the Legislature.

"It has a great chance of passing," McSorley said in a recent interview, "There's a lot of new legislators who are for it who have replaced legislators who were against it."

But while acknowledging the Democratic gains in the Legislature, conservative Sen. Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, who opposes the domestic partnership bill, is not conceding defeat. Sharer says the bill is a way to force courts to legalize same-sex marriage — which bill supporters deny — and predicts a major battle over the legislation in the upcoming session.

"Supreme courts in California and Connecticut ruled that banning gay marriage was unconstitutional," Sharer said. He said those decisions were based on domestic-partnership laws in those states.

Same-sex marriage and domestic-partnership has intensified as an issue for gay-rights activists around the country since November, when California voters approved Proposition 8. That ballot measure not only bans gay marriage but nullifies legal same-sex marriages that took place in California since May, when the state Supreme Court ruled that laws excluding same-sex couples from marriage were unconstitutional. The California attorney general is encouraging the courts to overturn Proposition 8.

Currently, California, Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine plus Washington, D.C., have domestic-partnership or civil-union laws. Two states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, allow same-sex marriages.

But even more states have laws or constitutional provisions prohibiting same-sex marriage. In fact, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, New Mexico is one of only five states without laws or constitutions that define marriage.

"There's lots of people in New Mexico who need, for whatever reason, to live together and share finances," McSorley said. "This bill provides a device, virtually free, to allow couples to share financial and legal responsibilities."

Linda Siegle, a lobbyist for Equality New Mexico, a gay-rights organization, said in a recent interview that McSorley's bill is not a marriage bill. She said allowing legal domestic partnership arrangements still is a "separate and unequal" situation for same-sex couples. For one thing, the federal government does not recognize a domestic-partner relationship as a married couple.

But, she said, a domestic-partership law would be far better than the status quo.

Domestic partnership bills have passed the House of Representatives three times in the past, Siegle said. Two years ago, the Senate came within one vote of passing the bill.

McSorley said he doesn't believe lawmakers who vote for a domestic-partnership law have anything to fear in terms of voter backlash.

"Nobody who has voted for it has been defeated because of it," he said. "It's only been an issue in races with those who voted against it."

Sharer said "McSorley and his gang" actively campaigned against some legislators who oppose domestic partnerships. "They tried to destroy the reputations of legislators who believe in traditional marriage," he said.

The Farmington senator said he tried to craft a compromise in a recent legislative session that would have given couples who live together — including homosexual couples — virtually all the rights that married couples have, including hospital visits, inheritance rights and other legal and financial rights.

But his legislation would have defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. Gay-rights advocates opposed that, which Sharer said convinced him they want a domestic-partnership bill to be an opening to force courts to legalize gay marriage.

Sharer said his opposition to McSorley's domestic-partnership bill is based on the fact that through most of recorded history — "from the days of Confucius and Aristotle," he said — marriage has been considered a union of one man and one woman. "It's not just a Christian thing," he said. "It predates Christianity."

McSorley argues that domestic partnerships are no threat to traditional marriages.

"In the 1970s, people said there would be co-ed bathrooms and locker rooms if we passed the (state) Equal Rights Amendment," he said. "Then later when we passed (anti-discrimination) gay rights bills, they said it would destroy the employers' ability to choose who they wanted to hire. All these doomsday scenarios never come true. Many other states have these kind of laws and none of them have caused the horrific scenarios, the unproven, outrageous, ridiculous claims you hear from the opponents."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.