Because of the hoopla over the governor’s veto of the same-sex marriage bill, most people are not aware that the governor did sign, as I said he would, AB 1400.

As of Jan. 1, California will not tolerate its agencies and private businesses to discriminate based upon one’s marital status, sexual orientation or gender identity. Equally important, the law does not allow for a religious or conscience exemption.

How does that relate to same-sex marriage and the governor’s support for it? It’s pretty simple logic. California cannot tell businesses that they may not discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status and sexual orientation, but that it’s perfectly fine for the state to do so in denying marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The political strategy of Marc Leno was to keep all the focus on the “marriage bill” so that the right wing could not kill AB 1400, and several other bills that expanded the rights of domestic partners. The governor signed them all.

The right wing knows this strategy perfectly well. And they’re using it with Prop. 73. Buried in the fine print of an initiative to require parental notice for an abortion, they want life defined as beginning at “conception.” They know perfectly well that this will then become the basis for arguing that embryonic research is killing an unborn child.

The GLBT media has rightly lambasted the governor for his veto of the marriage bill. But, by signing the other bills, he set the stage for major victories in the courts over the matters I’ve chronicled here.

Last week, local family lawyer Jane Brooks won a victory after an adoption service agreed that it engaged in bias because it would not provide Brooks and her partner services because they were not a “typical nuclear family.” They were denied services because they are not married, but they were protected as registered domestic partners.

The latest one is Guadalupe Benitez’s claim against a fertility clinic, where two doctors refused her services because she’s not married. Thanks to the governor, as of Jan. 1 there’s no longer a debate about whether it’s bias because she’s a lesbian or because she’s not married. Businesses can’t discriminate against her on either basis. The doctors claim that they have a “religious” prerogative to deny services to single women. The Legislature has rejected such a defense under California law.

The last resort will be the U.S. Supreme Court, which knows that if it allows businesses to assert a religious defense to civil rights laws, then we go back to segregation.

There are thousands of “religious societies,” many of which require adherents not to associate with just homosexuals, but with various races and religions.

While I don’t want to be an apologist for Arnold, let’s be fair: The reality is that he signed bills that Pete Wilson would have vetoed. And Gray Davis, when he spoke to the Democratic Club, said even he would not sign a gay marriage bill because we’re “not ready for marriage.”

The bills Schwarzenegger did sign were opposed by every Republican in both the Assembly and Senate. Even Shirley Horton, whom the governor campaigned for (and whose district includes a huge GLBT segment), voted against these bills.

I know this will come as a shock and a huge secret to most Californians, but California already allows “same-sex” marriage. It’s really a non-issue. I’m talking about what some call a transgender marriage. One partner in the marriage was, biologically, a member of the same sex as their partner at birth. In California, and other states, these people can obtain new birth certificates (changing their birth sex), and then get marriage licenses.

California has allowed this for years. And court challenges – to the extent that there have been any – have been dismissed by trial courts. (Other states, such as Kansas, will not recognize a transgender marriage, at least until the legislative bodies in those states draft laws defining gender identity to go beyond whether a child is born with male or female genitalia.)

How does this relate to “gay” marriage? A transgender marriage is a marriage that is incapable of biological reproduction. That is the biggest claim the right uses against gay marriage. They argue that marriage should be a union capable of producing kids the biological way. So, with the reproductive element removed from the marriage, what’s the problem then with allowing persons who are truly persons of the same gender to marry?

They also argue that children should have parents of the opposite sex for role modeling. A transgender parent is just fine, but the right would argue that a transgender person is not a pure role model.