Loggorhea done right.
This year Governor Gregoire signed into law Senate Bill 5688 - expanding the protections offered to State Registered Domestic Partners. Coined the “Everything but Marriage” bill (although there’s still so much missing), this bill provides all the protections to State Registered Domestic Partners (of which there are approximately 6,000) that Washington State provides to married couples.
The bill is still unable to provide the benefits awarded federally to married couples, such as the right to immigrate to this country or not pay income taxes on shared health benefits, etc.
I was at the hearing for both Senate Bill 5688 and its house equivalent 1727. We were all surprised to see how many bigots showed up to protest the bill (see my coverage here), I think past years gains in gay rights gave us all a false sense of security.
There was pushing, shoving, name-calling, as well as out-and-out lying. This front-and-center bigotry hasn’t changed much as it transitioned into the Referendum, and here we are today, asked to codify a slightly lesser disparity in gay rights through popular vote.
In effect, vote yes on this Referendum to provide some level of equality. We’re already letting the religious nut-jobs who believe marriage is a straight person right set the bar, and after conceding that we wouldn’t ask for Gay Marriage in this state, they’re now trying to push us back even further.
I’m personally sick of this debate. There are a lot of more important things to worry about, but each year we have to defend these rights is another year we can’t work on more pressing issues. Fix it and forget it.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/why-do-you-hate-me/Content?oid=2156227
http://approvereferendum71.org/
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/how-they-lie/Content?oid=1930457
Posted 9 months ago at 3:19 pm. Add a comment
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 5:51 pm. 1 comment
I’m still editing the earlier story, and listening to the Senate hearing.
I just had to spit out.
No one has the privilege to make sure that no one else has privileges. You do not have the right to know that people you don’t like don’t have rights.
Crazy old lady just gave us a Sex Ed talk about Adam and Eve and men and women coming together physically.
Ah!
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 4:18 pm. 1 comment
The atmosphere was tense, the temperature hot, and the crowd an uneven mix of vitriol and hope at today’s House Bill 1727 public hearing. Openly gay Representative Jamie Pedersen introduced the bill, which will provide all of the benefits of marriage to Washington State’s domestic partners.“[I know] there are strong feelings on this bill,” Pedersen said to the crowd in a plea for civility. “But we are not going to tolerate disrespect. I understand that there has been some name-calling and pushing out in the halls. We are not going to tolerate that in here and neither will security.”
Constituents against the bill outnumbered those for the bill nearly 3 to 1. Wearing white “Vote No! on 1727 and 5688” stickers and matching pins featuring the silhouette of a man and a woman, the members of the crowd cheered, applauded, and yelled amen while their side spoke, despite repeated requests from legislators to be silent.
“We can’t have outbreaks like that if we are to have people coming up to testify,” Pedersen told the crowd. “It’s against the rules.”
The crowd booed. Many of the people against the bill were children who looked to have been pulled out of middle school to attend the hearing. Pubescent youth leaned against walls, their “Vote No” stickers oversized on their small, acne-riddled forms. Many seemed disinterested and bored. A mother sitting next to me scolded her son for putting his “Marriage is between a Man and a Woman” pin in his mouth.
Those for the bill sat in front of the angry crowd and told personal stories about their families. Pairs of mothers introduced their children, and a gay firefighter spoke of his fear of dying on the job and being unable to leave anything to his partner of 13 years.
The opposition to the bill spoke just as passionately, although their arguments seldom were about the bill itself. Pastors, church groups, and concerned citizens from Eastern Washington threatened the collapse of the public school system, the dissolution of the economy due to rising gay health care costs, and burning in Hell.
Pedersen sat quietly during much of the testimony; his hands clasped across his mouth as he listened to women talk of their experience “working with the ex-gay” community. Repeatedly, he and other Representatives would interrupt to remind those against the bill that this was not a Gay Marriage bill, nor a chance to preach about the Bible.
“I’m sorry,” Pedersen would repeat. “I really wish that you could speak to the bill.”
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 2:10 pm. Add a comment
The gays have had their fun, and after two years of state-sponsored domestic partnership, it’s time to preserve “public peace, health, or safety, or support of the state government and its existing public institutions”.
So says house bill 1980, the brainchild of Representative Jim McCune R-2, whose district I couldn’t find on a map. 
Co-sponsored by like-minded Republicans Shea, Crouse, Schmick, Cox, and Roach, the bill is “AN ACT Relating to reaffirming and protecting the institution and benefits of marriage as a union between a man and a woman”. In doing so, the legislation would revoke all domestic partnership benefits to already registered same-sex couples in Washington, as well as denying any future benefits that could be granted to the gays of the future.
Citing “serious concern” over the recent California Supreme Court “imposition” that ruled domestic partnerships were unequal to marriage and violated the state’s constitution, the representatives have decided they should nip all problems in the bud by declaring domestic partnerships illegal.
The good news, there is only six Republicans signed on to the bill. In contrast, house bill 1727 (which expands all rights of marriage to domestic partners) has support from Representatives Pedersen, Walsh, Moeller, Johnson, Carlyle, Quall, Sullivan, Maxwell, Roberts, Chase, Upthegrove, White, Conway, Nelson, Cody, Hudgins, Morris, Eddy, Liias, Kagi, Ormsby, Rolfes, Clibborn, Dunshee, Pettigrew, Springer, Hunter, Williams, Blake, Darneille, Goodman, Dickerson, Hasegawa, Linville, Kenney, Appleton, Van De Wege, Kessler, Santos, Sells, O’Brien, Ericks, Wallace, McCoy, Kirby, Haigh, Takko, Hurst, Seaquist, Wood, Flannigan, Orwall, Jacks, Finn, Hunt, Simpson, and Driscol.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 2:42 pm. 2 comments
Well, just equal. But you get rid of all that crazy religious guilt and saving yourself for marriage. And you still get to have the party!
Right now the Domestic Partnerships we have in Washington are a start, but they provide a small fraction of the benefits that true marriage provides.
HB 1727 intends to change that. The 110 page bill will provide all rights that marriage provides to state-sponsored Domestic Partnerships. The bill is accompanied by Senate Bill 5688, which would do the same thing.
The bill digest reads:
“Declares that for all purposes under state law, state registered domestic partners shall be treated the same as married spouses. Any privilege, immunity, right, benefit, or responsibility granted or imposed by statute, administrative or court rule, policy, common law or any other law to an individual because the individual is or was a spouse, or because the individual is or was an in-law in a specified way to another individual, is granted on equivalent terms, substantive and procedural, to an individual because the individual is or was in a state registered domestic partnership or because the individual is or was, based on a state registered domestic partnership, related in a specified way to another individual. Provides that the act shall be liberally construed to achieve equal treatment, to the extent not in conflict with federal law, of state registered domestic partners and married spouses.”
Anyone wishing to either listen in on the hearing, or give testimony should attend the public hearing Thursday, February 5th at 10 AM (the house bill) or 3:30 PM (senate version) in Olympia, Washington.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 1:47 pm. Add a comment
I found this copy of their interview from 5 days ago. Got to love our famous queers.
Some of my favorite moments:
Rachel Maddow was eloquent but straight to the point when referencing the Gay’s disappointment in Clinton e.g. “The Clinton administration threw the Gay and Lesbian people under the bus.” She also asked some good questions about Obama’s 1996 flip-flop on Gay Marriage.
And of course, perhaps a slight faux-paus, but I giggled like a school girl when Robinson said “No one had a bigger tent than Jesus.”
Come on. Gay men should know better….
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 5:22 pm. Add a comment
The Windy City Times has finally published the article which has already made its way around the entire Internet.
In 1996, President-Elect Barack Obama filled out a questionnaire for the then Outlines newspaper (since merged with Windy City). In a signed document, he announced he supported same-sex marriage.
Even better, in 2004 Obama conducted an interview with the Windy City Times while preparing for his successful run for Senate. In it, Obama explicitly described his new vigor for civil-unions instead of same-sex marriage as a purely strategic decision.
“WCT: Do you have a position on marriage vs. civil unions?
Obama: I am a fierce supporter of domestic-partnership and civil-union laws. I am not a supporter of gay marriage as it has been thrown about, primarily just as a strategic issue. I think that marriage, in the minds of a lot of voters, has a religious connotation. I know that’s true in the African-American community, for example. And if you asked people, ‘should gay and lesbian people have the same rights to transfer property, and visit hospitals, and et cetera,’ they would say, ‘absolutely.’ And then if you talk about, ‘should they get married?’, then suddenly …
WCT: There are more than 1,000 federal benefits that come with marriage. Looking back in the 1960s and inter-racial marriage, the polls showed people against that as well.
Obama: Since I’m a product of an interracial marriage, I’m very keenly aware of …
Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 3:39 pm. Add a comment