The state Senate is expected to vote today on whether to revive a civil-unions bill, but the chances the bill will be pulled from committee are doubtful after a leading senator said he would likely oppose the move.

State Sen. Brian Taniguchi, D-10th (Manoa, McCully), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Government Operations Committee, said he is leaning against recalling the bill from his committee, where it stalled in a 3-3 vote last month.

"I'm headed toward going down on the pull," the senator said.

Taniguchi's opinion, as chairman, will carry great weight with other senators. He initially said he would likely vote with reservations to recall the bill, but, after being asked by Senate leaders, he chose to reconsider.

Taniguchi said it is likely Gov. Linda Lingle would veto the bill and that the state House and Senate would not have the two-thirds' votes for an override. He suggested lawmakers could work on possible amendments, such as strengthening the state's reciprocal beneficiaries law to give same-sex partners expanded rights, and discuss the idea again next session.

State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), and several other senators said they would follow Taniguchi to protect the integrity of the committee process.

"It's not the bill itself, but it's how we function among ourselves. And when a committee has done what this committee has done, it is also an issue of respecting the committee members themselves as well," Hanabusa said.

State Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser, D-7th (Kaua'i, Ni'ihau), conceded that Taniguchi's opposition would significantly dim the chances he will get the votes necessary to pull the bill. Under the state Constitution, it would take nine of 25 senators to recall a bill from committee.

"All the members were encouraged to look at the bill and to think about the issue. It's an important issue to many in our community. It's something that many of us have wrestled with," Hooser said. "I particularly believe it's an important piece of legislation, and it's something that all the members are going to just have to reach down inside and vote their conscience."

CRUMBLING SUPPORT

The bill, which passed the state House last month, would give same-sex partners the same rights, benefits and responsibilities as married couples under state law. It would also recognize civil unions, domestic partnerships and same-sex marriages performed in other states as civil unions in Hawai'i.

Activists behind the bill had believed their major obstacle was the House and had been given assurances that the Senate had the votes to pass the bill. Last month, both Hanabusa and Hooser said there were likely enough votes in the Senate to pull the bill from committee and pass it on the floor.

But the support began to crumble after a large rally by religious conservatives at the state Capitol and a stream of telephone calls and e-mails to senators' offices opposing the bill.

Several senators have said they back civil unions but do not want to set a precedent for other bills by pulling it from committee. After Hanabusa appeared to shift on the issue, other senators who belong to her leadership faction also began to wobble, and Taniguchi's opposition would give them political cover to explain their reversal.

Over the past few days, Hanabusa has warned that the bill, if passed, could prompt a lawsuit from gay activists who could claim an equal protection right to marriage. In October, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that same-sex partners have a constitutional right to marry as a matter of equal protection under the law. Gay couples had challenged the state's civil-unions law as discriminatory.

A similar lawsuit in Hawai'i, Hanabusa and other senators argue, could drag on for several years and expose lawmakers who voted for civil unions to political backlash for opening the door to same-sex marriage.

But the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i, University of Hawai'i-Manoa constitutional law professor Jon Van Dyke, and former state Supreme Court associate justice Steven Levinson countered in separate memos that a similar lawsuit would be difficult in Hawai'i. In 1998, nearly 70 percent of voters supported a constitutional amendment that gave the state Legislature the power to reserve marriage between a man and a woman.

"Hawai'i's Constitution gives the responsibility of defining marriage to the state Legislature, and Hawai'i's appellate courts will decline to address any challenge to the definition established by the Legislature," Van Dyke wrote in a letter to Hooser.

SUPPORTERS UPSET

Alan Spector, the co-chairman of the Family Equality Coalition, said he had been told personally by Taniguchi that the senator would vote with reservations to pull the bill. Other activists also said Taniguchi had given them assurances. "I'm very, very disappointed if this is true," he said.

"We would like senators to do the right thing and to vote for giving all of Hawai'i's families equal rights," said Spector, who was sign-waving with dozens of other supporters of the bill outside the state Capitol yesterday afternoon. "That's what the Constitution requires."

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition-Hawai'i yesterday also urged the Senate to pass the civil-unions bill.

Earlier yesterday at the Capitol, dozens of opponents of civil unions from the African-American, Filipino-American and Korean-American communities gathered to urge senators not to pull the bill.

Bishop Carl E. Harris, the pastor of the Emmanuel Temple in Wahiawa, said it was wrong to compare civil unions with the civil rights movement.

"Can what is termed as 'hate crimes' by the gay community, really due to an outcry against their alternative lifestyle, be compared to being water-hosed down, burned, homes burned, beaten, lynched, merely for being born the wrong color?

"Segregated by water fountains, restrooms. Refused service almost everywhere, just because we were black. Something totally out of our jurisdiction of control," Harris said. "Former homosexual? It's been done, and that's possible. Former black? Never. It's not possible."