"Virginia's housing authority today killed a plan to extend state loans to gay and other unmarried couples by allowing them to pool their money to buy a home.

The proposal had drawn fierce opposition from conservative activists but had the support of Gov. Mark R. Warner (D).

Instead, the Virginia Housing Development Authority proposed rules to extend loans to single parents and make mortgages more accessible to the disabled and elderly, in an effort to make the program more broadly available.

'It's a compromise, an effort to come down somewhere in the middle and get us closer to meeting the affordable housing needs of the state,' said Art Bowen, the agency's director of public policy.

William H. Leighty, Warner's chief of staff, had urged the board to extend the loan program to gay couples. But the board members, all but one of whom are appointees of former governor James S. Gilmore III (R), voted 6 to 1 to consider the revised rules. A final vote on the policy is expected this spring after a public hearing, officials said.

Virginia requires borrowers to be married or, in most cases, related by blood to qualify for low-interest housing loans. But the authority proposed eliminating the 'family rule' in the fall after conducting a study of affordable housing needs across the state.

The study concluded that thousands of low- and moderate-income people were not eligible for loans because they did not fit the state's definition of a traditional family. The authority proposed eliminating the family rule for multiple borrowers, a change supported by lenders and real estate agents.

But social conservatives fought the change, calling it anti-family, and threatened to use the power of the General Assembly to keep the policy.

Virginia is the only state in which publicly backed loans generally are available only to traditional families, Bowen said. The family rule was set aside briefly in the 1990s but was reinstated in 1996, under pressure from then-Gov. George Allen (R) and other conservatives.

'We think it's important that the state continue its 300-year history of endorsing and encouraging marriage, which has the ability to procreate,' said Victoria Cobb, director of legislative affairs for the Richmond-based Family Foundation, which lobbied against changes to the family rule.

By allowing unmarried couples to receive loans, the state would put itself at financial risk, Cobb said: If a relationship breaks up, there is no guarantee, as there would be in the case of divorce, that the loan would be repaid.

Del. Ryan T. McDougle (R-Hanover) filed a bill last week to write the family rule into state law. House Bill 1306 would go further than the housing agency's proposal today, prohibiting single parents from buying homes together.

Warner's spokeswoman, Ellen Qualls, declined to say whether Warner, despite his support for an expanded loan policy, would veto the McDougle bill. She called eliminating the family rule 'the right thing to do.'

'It would make homeownership possible for more Virginians, and that's the mission of the Housing Development Authority,' she said.

Advocates for gay rights who attended today's meeting said they were disappointed that the authority backed away from its initial proposal.

'It's very obvious discrimination against gay people and those who aren't married,' said Danielle Poux, of Fairfax County, chairman of the Virginia Organizing Project, a group that advocates for the rights of homosexuals and other minorities. 'There are lots of ways to manifest family values.'

The authority's existing policy allows the elderly and disabled to pool their money to apply for loans under a waiver system. But Bowen said the waivers rarely are granted because of bureaucratic delays.

The Housing Development Authority issued 5,500 loans last year worth about $680 million.

In other matters today, the Senate's Courts of Justice Committee gave unanimous approval to Senate Bill 575 to help the families of five victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon whose bodies have not been recovered.

The state would issue death certificates to the families, allowing them to claim insurance money and personal effects. Virginia waits seven years before issuing death certificates in cases in which no body is recovered. The bill, sponsored by Warren E. Barry (R-Fairfax), would reduce the time to three months for the Pentagon victims.

The committee rejected Senate Bill 10, also sponsored by Barry, which would allow Virginians opposed to the death penalty to put their names on a state registry. If they were subsequently murdered, their killers would be ineligible for the death penalty.

Also today, the Senate passed three bills that would give child-welfare workers more authority in cases where authorities are considering returning abused or neglected children to their birth families. Senate Bills 130, 210 and 219 were introduced by Sen. Patricia S. Ticer (D-Alexandria) following the death last year of Katelynn Frazier, an Alexandria 3-year-old beaten to death by her mother's boyfriend after a life in foster care." (Lisa Rein, The Washington Post, January 24, 2002)