Marriage equality in Washington
By Haugen makes 25. Unless someone backs out, the votes are there.
It’s very, very likely an initiative to repeal this will be on the ballot in November. One recent poll suggests Washingtonians would prefer to keep the law rather than repeal by a 17 point margin (55-38). As we’ve seen in California and Maine, the bigot’s playbook (basically, lie about what this means for religious freedom, make absurd claims about indoctrination of children) can work. But that’s a big gap to close; I’m skeptical the usual strategy will work well enough to close this gap.
I was also pleased to see an email today from Jay Inslee (likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who should be considered an underdog at the moment) celebrating the news and blasting Rob McKenna (likely Republican gubernatorial candidate) for anti-equality stance, both because it’s a smart move politically (He may need to convince voters he’s not ‘too liberal’, but he also needs to convince voters McKenna isn’t the moderate he purports to be; this issue is much more useful for the latter task than the former) as well as the right thing to do.
A great day for Washington. The lessons of Maine and California make me nervous about November, but I’m cautiously optimistic.
…..in other marriage news, NOM celebrates this historic day by taking a few gratuitous whacks at parody’s bloated and rotten corpse.