Curious about your lawmaker's position on legalizing civil unions? If you rely on the voting record, you might not find out this session.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, state Rep. Tommy Waters, D-51st (Lanikai, Waimanalo), presided over a five-hour hearing and then decided to defer voting on the measure. That effectively kills the measure, House Bill 908, without action to force a vote.

It's time for the House to take that action. Any member who can muster 17 votes — one-third of the House — can recall the bill from the committee for an up-or-down vote on the floor.

Waters asserted that he took a straw poll of the members, but the bill did not have enough committee support to pass on a voice vote. "It would have died by an embarrassingly large margin," he said.

That's mystifying. There are 17 committee members, 14 of whom are Democrats. The Democratic Party gave its candidates in the last election a questionnaire seeking reactions to platform issues, according to party spokespersons. That survey included a question on the party's resolution supporting civil unions.

Nine votes are needed for committee passage. The party reports that of the Democrats on Judiciary, 10 of them checked off that they support civil unions: state Reps. Waters, Blake Oshiro, Alex Sonson, Ryan Yamane, Kirk Caldwell, Clift Tsuji, Josh Green, Hermina Morita, Joe Souki and Kyle Yamashita.

It's very possible that votes were swayed by the testimony. This is an emotional issue. Opponents say it was decided nearly a decade ago in the vote on a constitutional amendment excluding same-sex unions from the definition of marriage.

In fact, a civil union is not the same as marriage, largely because the rights it confers only apply in this state.

But it does clarify what civil rights same-sex couples should expect to have in a society that values equality. The civil-union issue mattered enough to Democrats to include it in the party platform. Now members of the House and the Senate owe it to voters to make their position public.