SEN. SAM Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on the District, has let it be known that he is bothered by an advisory opinion of the District's attorney general, Robert J. Spagnoletti, that "validly married same-sex couples," presumably living in the District, may file joint D.C. tax returns. The senator has warned that any action by the District to recognize gay marriages will trigger a congressional backlash. The prospect of some members of Congress taking out their displeasure on the District's budget or attacking the city's domestic partner benefits program has officials such as Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) worried -- "very extremely concerned" is the way the mayor put it in a lunch with Post editors and reporters on Wednesday.
Those fears may be well founded. But Mr. Brownback's not-so-veiled threat to intervene in the District's business is ill advised and unwarranted. Mr. Brownback is a proponent of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. He is also a potential candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 2008. Whether he views the prospect of leading a charge against the District as a boost to his presidential aspirations we leave to others to decide. What is clear, however, is that Mr. Brownback seems inclined to take the U.S. Senate to a place where neither circumstances nor the District's home rule powers invite Congress to go.
Mr. Spagnoletti's opinion is only advisory -- though we do not quarrel with it. As he observed, the city's Office of Tax and Revenue "reserves the authority" to reject joint tax returns filed by gay couples married last year in Massachusetts. The tax office's overseer, D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi, has said he would consult with both the attorney general and the mayor, and Mr. Williams is carefully studying the ruling and the legality of such joint tax filings while holding talks with a wide range of people in the city. The question of whether the District should or shouldn't allow gay couples married elsewhere to file joint D.C. tax returns is well within the city's authority to decide under
the Home Rule Act. Issues involving same-sex couples are being addressed in states and courts without intervention by Congress. So should it be in the nation's capital.
