The Hillsborough County Commission today voted 4-3 against creating a domestic partnership registry, marking them once again as an outlier when it comes to supporting any type of equal rights for the LGBT community.
Such a registry would have given unmarried couples in the county the power to make medical decisions and funeral arrangements for a distressed partner, and to participate in education decisions for their children.
The issue was proposed by GOP Commissioner Mark Sharpe, and supported by the only two Democrats on the board, Kevin Beckner and Les Miller. It was opposed by the remaining four Republicans on the board: Ken Hagan, Sandy Murman, Al Higginbotham and Victor Crist.
The vote will do nothing to change Hillsborough's reputation as anti-gay, though Sharpe insisted that the measure had nothing to do with LGBT rights and was simply good public policy.
Commissioner Les Miller urged his colleagues to support the measure, saying it was time that the county joined the 21st Century. He also emphasized that it wasn't a gay/lesbian issue, saying, "I’m a deacon of a black church, folks. I do know what I feel is right."
Currently 10 cities and six counties in Florida have passed such ordinances, nine of them within the last year (including Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Largo and Pinellas County).
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2013.