Date: 12 Sep 94 13:29:48 EDT
From: Jason Lin <71043.1570@compuserve.com>

TEXT OF WILSON LETTER TO ASSEMBLY ON BILL NO. 2810  9/11/94

To the Members of the California Assembly:

 I am returning Assembly Bill No. 2810 without my signature.

 This bill would establish a process for couples to register as domestic
partners with the Secretary of State. As a domestic partner, these
individuals would be entitled to hospital visitation rights and broader
rights in conservatorships. Additionally, domestic partners would be added to
the forms provided for statutory wills. This provision, however, would not
permit a domestic partner to automatically inherit property in the absence of
a will.

 AB 2810 is unnecessary to achieve its specific aims in terms of hospital
visitation, conservatorship, and testamentary disposition. There are already
provisions in existing law allowing the naming of any individual as a
beneficiary in a will or creating a durable power of attorney. Therefore,
these goals of AB 2810 can be achieved by exercising appropriate foresight.

 Furthermore, the changes sought by the bill can all be made without creating
in law some substitute for marriage. If seniors continue to be concerned that
there are federal disincentives to marriage, I am supportive of efforts to
remove economic penalties that serve as an impediment to marriage. As to the
provision regarding hospital visitations, I am issuing an Executive Order
that will allow competent adult patients to designate whomever they choose as
hospital visitors. The only remaining question presented by AB 2810 is the
proposed registration of domestic partners.

 According to census figures cited by the author, 86 percent of the audience
for AB 2810 are heterosexual couples who live together but do not marry. That
is, and should be, their choice as it is for any individual in a free
society.

 But government does have a role, indeed an obligation to adopt policies that
encourage and reward marriage and the formation of strong families --
families that provide the fundamental and best hope of preventing increasing
welfare dependency and increasing teen-age crime and violence. A society that
devalues marriage, and which accepts illegitimacy as commonplace, encourages
the explosion of teen-age out-of-wedlock births that California has in fact
experienced. It is a tragic mistake to do so with heavy costs that penalize
both the children of child-parents and society as a whole.

 Moreover, the Legislature has recently enacted important reforms to
California's welfare system which include a so-called ''wed-fare'' provision
which explicitly recognizes that state government has a duty to encourage
marriage and to assist in keeping low-income fathers in the home of welfare
recipients, not to drive them out, as welfare requirements have done
heretofore.

 We need to strengthen, not weaken, the institution of marriage. In virtually
every culture, marriage has been deservedly celebrated as a relationship
demanding commitment and unselfish giving to one's family -- especially to
one's children. Government policy ought not to discount marriage by offering
a substitute relationship that demands much less -- and provides much less
than is needed both by the children of such relationships, and ultimately
much less than is needed by society.

Cordially,

Pete Wilson