Sen. Rhoda Perry sponsored legislation that would define "domestic partner" for the purpose of granting authority to domestic partners to make funeral arrangements.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — Responding to one of the more heart-wrenching personal stories to emerge from the same-sex marriage debate, the Senate on Tuesday approved a bill giving “domestic partners” the right to claim the bodies of — and make funeral arrangements for — their loved ones.

A domestic partner is defined in the measure as “a person who prior to the decedent’s death was in an exclusive, intimate and committed relationship with the decedent.”

Despite hours of hearings at the State House — and seismic developments in other Northeast states — this bill is the only one of the dueling defense-of-marriage, same-sex marriage, divorce and equal-rights bills introduced in Rhode Island this year that has managed to make it out of a legislative committee.

At a hearing earlier this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected too because “we were not legally married or blood relatives.”

After struggling for years with depression, he said, Hanby took his own life.

Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office “our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate” from Connecticut, but “no one was willing to see these documents.”

He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they “waited another week” to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.

After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee “took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me,” but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.

“On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body,” and so, “on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest.”

“I felt as if I was treated not as a second-class citizen, but as a noncitizen,” Goldberg told the Senate Judiciary Committee, an hour into the first hearing this year in the 13-year push by gay-rights advocates for the right to marry in Rhode Island, and the pushback from the Roman Catholic Church and other opponents.

The Senate committee had before it that day competing legislation to prohibit same-sex marriages. With the 2009 legislative session now in its sixth — and probably final — month, no action has been taken on any of the other bills on the subject.

The bill that won Senate approval is narrowly framed. It adds “the domestic partner of the deceased” — right under the words “surviving spouse” — to the list of people a funeral director should consult about the arrangements.

It defines a domestic partner as someone who had been in “an exclusive, intimate and committed relationship” with the deceased, and had cohabited for at least a year at the time of the death. It also spells out the evidence necessary to prove the two were financially dependent, such as a joint mortgage, lease, checking or credit account, a “domestic partnership agreement or relationship contract.”

The bill was sponsored by Rhoda Perry, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. Asked if she expected any other bills in the same-sex marriage debate to make it out of a committee, she said: “I think I am going to answer the way President Obama answered: that is not at my grade level right now. I really don’t know.”

“There are horror stories from every angle, from families who refuse to accept a committed longtime partner in the funeral to a deceased person’s body spending weeks in a medical examiner’s office because the partner has no legal rights and the person who died had no other family. …We need to make the law clear about where domestic partners fit into the picture. Those who are grieving over the death of a loved one should not be further burdened with bureaucratic nightmares by a law that pretends they don’t exist,” Perry, a Providence Democrat, said.

Sen. Edward O’Neill, I-Lincoln, questioned the wisdom of giving a domestic partner rights to make such important decisions as cremation, over that of adult children. Perry noted that current law gives that right to spouses, over children of past marriages. O’Neill was one of three senators not voting. The final tally was 35 to 0.

The bill now moves to the House, where a similar bill — sponsored by Rep. David Segal, D-Providence — is pending in the House Judiciary Committee. Asked if this was the only bill likely to emerge from the heated same-sex rights debate in the House as well, spokesman Larry Berman responded: “It would be premature to say.”

kgregg@projo.com