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Loading ...Wash. gay partnership foes turn in signatures
07.27.2009 10:30am EDT
(Olympia, Wash) Sponsors of a campaign to overturn Washington state’s domestic partnership law turned in their petition signatures Saturday and said they believe they have enough to force a public vote.
The expanded “everything but marriage” domestic partnership law was scheduled to take effect Sunday, but is now delayed until the signatures can be counted, a process that could take up to a month.To qualify for the November ballot, supporters of Referendum 71 must have 120,577 voter signatures. Supporters say they have about 138,000 signatures.
“I feel our signatures are pretty clean,” said campaign spokesman Gary Randall.
If they have enough signatures, the law will be delayed until the outcome of the referendum. If they fall short, the domestic partnership expansion will immediately take effect.
The signatures were turned in a day after opponents of the new law announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort “too close to call” and asking people to show up on Saturday at the Capitol to turn in their signatures to the secretary of state’s office.
Greg MacPherson of Kent, Wash. said he drove two hours in traffic to turn in about a dozen signatures.
“We want to stand up and be counted,” he said.
The new domestic partnership law expands on Washington’s existing partnerships. The newest version adds registered domestic partners to all remaining areas of state law that presently apply only to married couples. Those statutes range from adoption and child support rights and obligations, to pensions and other public employee benefits.
The underlying domestic partnership law, which passed the Legislature two years ago, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.
Last year, lawmakers expanded it to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.
Josh Friedes, a spokesman for Washington Families Standing Together, said that if the referendum does end up on the ballot, he is optimistic that voters will retain the law.
“We need to have a conversation about the needs of gay and lesbian families,” he said. “So in some ways, this referendum brings to the foreground a lot of issues, and to that extent the dialogue can propel the movement forward.”
A political group called WhoSigned.Org has already said it will publish online the names of people who signed petitions. The petition-listing effort is not supported by the official campaign trying to keep R-71 off the ballot.
Publish the names. No hoods for the bigots to hide behind.
This just illustrates how disingenous the anti-gay crowd’s rhetoric really is. All the time you hear people say “I don’t care if they have the rights of marriage, but why can’t they just call it something else?”
Puh-lease.
If they had their way, these people would not only be limiting the scope of Washington’s domestic partnership law, they’d abolish it altogether. That’s what they attempted in California. While petitions for what became known as Prop 8 were circulating, they were also drumming up support for an amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman AND to repeal current domestic partnership law. So, don’t feed me these lies that you are just trying to “preserve marriage as it’s always been.” I don’t want to hear it.
the signatures are not “clean”, regardless of whether they can pass legal muster, they are violations of basic human rights to provide for each other in a coupled relationship. And domestic partnerships are NOT marriages in the eyes of the law anywhere in the USA.
get signatures to ban divorce in Washington and put it up for a vote also….if marriage is so “sacred” between only a man and woman and a vow to God, then divorce should not be allowed. Put their sanctity of marrige up to a mirror. Stir the pot a bit.
I believe we have to fight back with every fiber of our being … the bigots will not stop (if we let them) until we are all back in the closet and they can claim there are “no homosexuals in America.” We have to educate people; show our family, friends and neighbors that we are normal people just like them and all we want is the right to live our lives exactly as they can and do. We must not retreat on any front, at any time!
Re-marriage after divorce, according to the Bible, if that’s what you believe, is adultery. We need to gather signatures to ban divorce on the ballot. We need to also ban referendums. It is the job of the legislature to make law, not the common citizen.
Isn’t it interesting how the religious right wants to “save marriage” by banning people from marrying instead of taking positive measures to help people prepare for and live their marriages faithfully. The truth is that the religious right is less concerned about protecting marriage than it is about perpetuating discrimination, bigotry and ignorance.
Where the HELL is the Washington State Supreme Court to tell these bible thumping idiots that marriage equality is NOT a candidate for a vote because it is a RIGHT?
I know deep down the bigots WILL NOT WIN!!! – Not on my watch as a 23 year old gay activist!
I will start a petition for allowing the death peanlty to all scum bigots and thugs!!!! – Let the people sign.
The names, addresses and phone numbers of all bigots and anti-gay civil rights are all recorded at LTN. LTN (Love Thy Nagihbour) does not include Maine – they should include Maine as well (they have a petition as well).
This does not surprise me at all. The threshold for petition signatures is almost always lower than the population of a state. And though Washington is predominantly liberal, it has a more conservative eastern half from which all these signatures could easily be collected.
Fortunately, as I said, Washington is predominantly liberal. Petitions don’t mean much if the referendums they seek can’t actual pull in majority votes. It’s a delay of the inevitable.
You got the Mormons, the Catholics, and Many Many religious nuts with lots of money that want to make sure we remain second class citizens…
Sadly, most think this is their deed to get them an esculator ride right on up to God!