(Washington state): Gregoire proposes legislation to legalize gay marriage
Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday said she'll put forward legislation to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples.
The proposal will be introduced during the legislative session that starts Monday. If it's approved, Washington would become the seventh state to legalize gay marriage.
"Today, I'm announcing my support for a law that gives same-sex couples in our state the right to receive a marriage license in Washington - the same right given our heterosexual couples," Gregoire said before a crowd of gay marriage supporters at her office. "It is time, it is the right thing to do, and I will introduce the bill to make it happen."
The governor spoke for 20 minutes, laying out what she sees as the moral and legal reasons for the move, as well as the evolution of her personal views over the years.
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Link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2017157564_gregoire_to_introduce_gay_marr.html
For the record, if this passes Washington would become the ninth state to legalize gay marriages, not the seventh as stated in this article. Marriage equality was once a reality in California in 2008 and was passed by the state legislature in Maine in 2009, but the marriage rights of gay and lesbian citizens were later voted away by the mob of majority rule at the ballot box in both cases.
By saying "the seventh state to legalize," the writer of this article completely whitewashes this the heinous lenghts to which anti-gay forces have gone to deny gay and lesbian citizens their equality and does a real disservice to the marriage equality movement. And this writer is far from the first to do so.
Sorry, personal peeve.
Thank you to Governor Gregoire for taking concrete steps to ensure equality for gay and lesbian citizens of her state. Keeping my fingers crossed that this bill passes the state legislature and withstands the scrutiny of a public vote, because I'm sure a referendum on this bill will certainly follow.