A special session to give the issue of civil unions for same-sex couples more time for debate didn’t produce a different outcome, though it did ratchet up partisan tensions.

In fact, legislation to create civil unions died even faster during the special session that began Monday than it did during the regular session that ended last Wednesday. The House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee this evening shot down the bill on a 5-4 party line vote, stopping it from getting to the House floor, where it would have passed with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats.

Even committee member Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, who has a gay son, said he couldn’t vote for the bill. He cited the 2006 vote by Coloradans to ban gay marriage.

“What you’re asking me to do here is invalidate the vote of six years ago,” Coram said. “I’m concerned that the gay community is being used as a political pawn. For four years we had a Democrat governor, a Democrat house and a Democrat Senate. The issue never came up. It only came up when we got a split house.

“I think that’s wrong.”

But Alex Hornaday, treasurer of the Denver County Republicans and vice president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said GOP lawmakers, who hold a tenuous 33-32 majority in the House and who have designs on retaking the Democratic-controlled Senate, may have shot themselves in the foot.

“I’m afraid what happened last week has already doomed our razor-thin majority in the House,” Hornaday said, referring to procedural wrangling that kept the bill from coming to a vote in the House despite there being enough votes to pass it.

This morning, House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, sent the bill to State Affairs, known as a “kill committee” because it lacked the votes needed to pass, dashing gay rights supporters’ hopes that the special legislative session might give the bill another chance of making it to the House floor, where its bipartisan support would allow it to move the governor’s desk and be signed into law.

Supporters of the bill packed the committee room in the hopes of willing the bill forward.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, the sponsor of the bill, said it felt like deja vu to be presenting the bill for the fourth time before a committee in 2012. Three separate House committees passed the bill in the regular session — no small feat for any bill — before it died on the House calendar without ever coming to a floor vote.

“This is an issue that in 20 years or less people are going to look back and say, ‘Why was this an issue?’ ” Ferrandino said. “This is going to happen. It’s just a question of when it’s going to happen.”

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, testifying for civil unions supporters, called the bill, “what we all know to be the right thing to do.”

“Which side of history are you going to be on?” Webb asked committee members.

Opponents of the bill also packed the hearing room, wearing white T-shirts reading, “Loving All, Protecting Marriage.”

David Williams, El Paso County Republican chairman, called the bill an “end run around the constitution,” and James Flynn, chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, said the legislation was “a rash reaction to obvious political pressure from special interest groups.”

The bill’s defeat capped several days of intense partisan warfare, marked by Republican-backed radio ads and robocalls attacking Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, for calling the special session.

Hickenlooper called the special session after the House failed to debate Senate Bill 2, which would have created civil unions for same-sex couples, even though there were enough votes to pass it. In the crossfire over the issue, the Republican-controlled House killed 30 other bills that would have passed otherwise.

“We owe it to the people we serve to do better,” Hickenlooper wrote in a letter delivered to lawmakers this morning.

House Republicans have never before attacked Hickenlooper so strongly as they have the last few days, and many Republicans have frequently praised the governor, who says he tries to avoid partisan fights.

Last week, when Hickenlooper was told that McNulty accused him of coordinating with the Obama campaign on the issue of civil unions and had Obama campaign operatives meeting in the governor’s office, Hickenlooper actually broke into laughter, asking reporters if they were joking.

But McNulty doubled down on the accusation again today, saying, “If I were accused of making a decision because of President Obama’s campaign strategy, I would have laughed nervously, too.

“The bottom line is Colorado operatives are moving in and out of the governor’s office. He can deny it, but that’s what happened.”

Some of the bills killed last week were saved at the last minute by grafting them onto other bills headed to the governor’s desk, but some didn’t make it. Hickenlooper called the session to address six of those issues — along with civil unions.

Coloradans were hit with robocalls over the weekend from a conservative group called Compass Colorado urging them to call lawmakers and the governor and say politicians should focus on jobs and the economy. Compass Colorado also launched a radio ad attacking Hickenlooper and Democrats for focusing on “same-sex marriage” instead of jobs.

Asked why he assigned the bill to House State Affairs instead of the House Judiciary Committee, where it passed during the regular legislative session that ended Wednesday, McNulty spoke of the need for efficiency while simultaneously blasting Hickenlooper for calling the special session.

“This is Gov. Hickenlooper’s special session that he called for the purpose of passing same-sex marriage,” the speaker said, continuing his practice of equating civil unions legislation as the same legal footing as marriage. “From our perspective, our side is focused on job creation and economic recovery.”

Ferrandino scoffed at McNulty’s comments, saying the public wouldn’t believe Republican attempts to deflect attention off themselves.

“We’re standing here today in the speaker’s special session,” Ferrandino said, mocking GOP assertions of being concerned about job creation.

“They were so dead-set on killing a bill around equality — making sure that every family has equal access to the law — that they killed many jobs bills,” he said, pointing to bills that would fund $55 million in water infrastructure projects around the state and stabilize unemployment insurance rates for businesses.

Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com