So...they were being chicken and disingenuous to attempt to accurately portray what the law said?

Interesting spin, Josh. :-)

Whatever. Sometimes, you have to realize that it's not all about you.

You can raise a fuss about it now - or you can wait until the State Supreme Court makes it a moot point.

Meanwhile, gay married Canadians come to the US all the time, and under NAFTA, when one of them dies here - and it will happen eventually - there's going to be lots of legal stuff happening then. And the whole gay married can't be in the US thing will come crumbling down like the fake house of cards it is, just as the infamous Coloreds can't marry Whites laws (I think that's what it was called, miscegenation, whatever, back then people were Colored, then Brown, then Black, one loses track).

Time wounds all heels.

Come on Josh... Talk about your armchair quarterbacking!

If you're going to bash "them" for employing a strategy you disagree with, why did you wait until now to speak up?

Why not show some leadership and make a stink about this when there was time to make a difference in the approach?

Now it's just more typical Stranger Sour Grapes. You guys have influence and cred with a lot of people. Use it to lead and not just criticize. Please.

bizarre hindsight analysis. i thought the law was very specific about what constitutes discrimination, and marriage was not on the list. no one said that marriage and discrimination were not linked, but that the law had separated the two to make partial progress now. and you really trivialize all the forms of discrimination that are now illegal by saying that their prohibition is insignificant unless it's coupled with gay marriage legalization. finally, if you look at polling numbers, i think you would see that many, perhaps most, washington state residents are opposed to gay marriage.

so sorry for winning, josh! we'll try harder next time!

"If they had admitted that Eyman was right—that gay rights and gay marriage are linked—Gay rights advocates would now be able to say that Eyman’s failure to get his anti-gay rights referendum on the ballot was a clear signal that Washington doesn’t have a problem w gay marriage."

Very dangerous! The point was to not rile up the anti-gay marriage base with this. Such an argument would have invariably brought out more people to sign. That would have please the bigots royally.

No, you must break down the detail in very specific legal definitions, otherwise you will lose credibility with the public when it gets highlighted by opponents and researched by the voters.

No Josh, no.

Why on earth would gay rights advocates want to kiss a victory on discrimination in housing and lending goodbye just to get some meaningless "moral" victory on gay marriage. I am completely baffled by the "I want it all, and I want it now" attitude held by folks on either extreme of the political spectrum.

Gay rights advocates that separated the issues were simply being true to their constituency. It is more important to ensure that this measure doesn't get on the ballot, (which prevents gay rights advocates from making spending more money to fight until November), than it is to hold some sort of meaningless "mandate" from the public on the issue of gay marriage. It's not like those individuals who actually are against gay marriage would be swayed by gay rights groups telling them they support it.

Your argument that if people can't discriminate in housing, then they can't discriminate in marriage is simply wrong. HB 2661 protects the following subsets from discrimination:

"race, creed, color, national origin, families with children, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, or the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability or the
use of a trained dog guide or service animal by a disabled person."

Let's look at age-- are 50 year olds allowed to marry two year olds? How about families with children, are these groups allowed to marry each other? NO! HB 2661 only protects these groups of people from discrimination in the limited areas of housing, lending, employment, insurance, and commerce.

In fact, HB 2661 actually says: "Inclusion of sexual orientation in this chapter shall not be construed to modify or supersede state law relating to marriage."

I hope that the Washington Supreme Court is waiting until after November to hand down their decision concerning gay marriage. The delay makes me hopeful that the Supreme Court has decided to recognize gay marriage and is trying to avoid a political backlash before the elections.

i have to agree with daniel k here. if anything, that would have just resulted in more people signing the stupid petition. if that would have been enough, who knows, but it could have, which is not a good risk to take.

it is also a good point that gay advocates would have been lying, just as eyman was.

Given that even in the lgbt world not everyone is pro same-sex marriage, the suggested strategy would have been as needlessly divisive as it is needlessly provocative. Even among lgbt's who support same-sex marriage not everyone would agree about giving it such a high priority. One has to fight one's battles strategically, or one becomes as overextended as - say - the US armed forces in the Mideast. While pushing the same-sex marriage issue at this juncture might make sense for someone for whom it was a pressing issue, it wouldn't make sense for someone for whom other issues were more important. Politics is a matter of locating effective overlapping consensus, and I think it's pretty obvious that in this case the most effective concensus was had by limiting the issue to discrimination in the workplace and in housing.

Civil rights regarding discrimination in housing and employment are only vaguely related to marriage rights to most people, even in the gay community. Legally they are completely separate issues. I haven't seen any actual polling in Washington State, but I've seen plenty of other polls that show that a majority of people don't think gays should be discriminated against in housing & employment, but who also say we shouldn't be allowed to get married. Sure, those are conflicting viewpoints, but lots of people hold conflicting viewpoints.

It took us decades to get the state-wide civil rights bill passed. Don't piss on it by trying to drag the marriage issue in with it.

I, too, hope the state supreme court rules in favor of gay marriage. If they do, expect that Eyman (or Hutch or someone else) will file an initiative to amend the constitution. And he'll have a lot more success getting signatures for that than he did for R-65.

Except WA's constitution can't be amended by initiative, SDA.

Is this some kind of payback becaruse Washington Won't Discriminate was looking good recently and the Stranger wante to kick them one more time?

Scream at Annm fucking ann.Scream at Laureie, Fucking Laurie.

Josh, you struck out with this lame analysis. ANDm if the link had been made by the really smart and activst gay leadership ---- and then they lost --- you would be saying, GOD, how stupid was that error, not to know how to tead a poll in apolitical contest.

Next.

Sorry for the mistakes, meant to review. Still, Josh, you missed the mark on this what if -- who if --- and maybe if ....

677 by the way Josh, was the great gamble that failed. Been down that track.

Right on, Josh! I can't believe all the political tacticians and legal-fine-print-parsers posting here who so afraid they might loose voter support that they are unwilling to take a stand on principals. If discriminating against gays in housing and jobs is bad, then so is discrimnating against gays in government benefits. It's really a very simple idea.

At the risk of boring those who read my last post on this, I want to take the opportunity to reiterate my proposal for an entirely fair and non-discriminatory solution to this issue, one that could actually satify conservatives as well as liberals! We should simply abolish legal marriage. Oh, people could still hold whatever ceremonies they wanted to, but they would be of absolutely no legal consequence. People (of any sex or number) who actually wanted to share property or confer a medical power of attorney could sign contracts to that effect. Regarding children, we already have a well-established set of laws governing the rights and obligations of unmarried parents. Regarding taxes, we could simplify the system by just taxing people as individuals. Regarding job benefits, employers and workers could negotiate over eligibility just like they already do on other aspects of compensation today.

Once one accepts the idea that the government shouldn't ban some kinds private consensual relationships, it seems a small and reasonable step to the conclusion that the government shouldn't endorse some kinds of private consensual relationships either. Indeed, it is hard to see why the government of any society that values individual liberties should be issuing stamps of approval on prefered relationships.

Some people may agree in principle, but consider my position so politically far-fetched as to be uninteresting. But I don't think that's necessarily true. Certainly I expect that many right-wing traditionalists would rather have the government stop endorsing relationships than have the government endorse homosexual relationships. And I can't think of any objections to the elimination of legal marriage from a left-wing perspective.

D-Wright,

If you really think “[i]nclusion of sexual orientation in this chapter shall not be construed to modify or supersede state law relating to marriage" is "legal fine print," then that's your deal. I just ask if a gay couple could cite HB 2661 to a marriage licensor as proof they should be entitled to wed under state law?

To me, the ultimate goal is preventing discrimination against gays in housing, commerce, etc. and legalizing gay marriage. I don't really give a shit about taking an all encompassing stand, if it is more effective to focus on each issue separately and make slow, but permanent progress. It still scares me that Oregonians voted against gay marriage, and I don't want to see a repeat of that here.

Finally, your proposal to abolish legal marriage sounds like a nightmare that could only have been envisioned by a follower of Richard Epstein’s contract based tort reform. Wealthier individuals will have a bargaining advantage over the less fortunate. (I am talking about bargaining discrepancy both between spouses and a different quality of contracts amongst couples from different income levels). The problem with these policies is that humans are notoriously poor planners, who don't like to spend time drafting contracts unless they absolutely must. The convenience provided by marriage is that only one document needs to be signed—one that conveys a multitude of rights and default property arrangements.

Wow, Ughh. Thanks for responding, but that has got to be the most ridiculous crypto-traditionalist, neo-Marxist (or is it neo-traditionalist, crypto-Marxist?) explanation of the purpose of marriage I have ever heard. I'm sure a lot of married Republicans will be very surprised to learn that the actual purpose of that hallowed institution is to equalize power between the rich and the poor.

I know that you alreay wrote that you don't care about principals, but, believe it or not, some of us like to frame discussions about how to organize our society in terms of broad principals, instead of just advocating whatever we think will garner the most goodies for us and our friends. So please humor me and try to sketch some principals that govern just how far the government should carry this equalization program.

Because, in case you haven't noticed, even though we've instituted marriage, and thus equalized the power of rich and poor spouses, there are a lot of other areas where rich and poor are not equal. For example, rich kids get better educations than poor kids; and rich people can use their money to buy more stuff than the poor, too. Perhaps, to solve these problems, we could make all children wards of the state, and pay everyone the same salary. Is that where you are headed, and you just think it wouldn't be politically astute to reveal it just yet?

Anyway, thanks for cluing me in on the progressive reason for marriage. I would never have guessed!

You are terrific at putting words in my mouth. Could you point to where I said that equalizing the status between rich and poor was the purpose of marriage? As far as I can tell, I only stated that marriage as it currently stands is convenient for a multitude of people and your solution to the marriage issue would introduce problems that aren't a part of the current system. I don't think there is any one "purpose" to marriage. I do think that one of the benefits of the historical acceptance and institutionalization of marriage is to provide a relatively simple process for allocating rights.

I can't tell from your post if you concede that income discrepancy and contract drafting problems would indeed be a part of your contract based, marriage-less society. Do you?

Just because income discrepancy problems are present in other parts of our society does not mean we should seek to exacerbate the situation in other situations.

I also never stated that I don't care about principles. I think that principles like: “gays should be free from discrimination� and “gays should be allowed to marry� are important. However, I disagree with the notion that just because I think gays should be allowed to marry prohibits me from separately advocating for the less controversial notion that gays should not be discriminated against. To me, it is more disingenuous to claim that HB 2661 stands for something it emphatically does not, than it is to fight for gradual change.

Uggh: Thanks for responding so good-naturedly to my rather acid dismissal of your proposed left-wing justification for marriage. I'll try my best to reply in kind, even though I really, honestly think the proposed justification was very silly.

First off, I wouldn't consider a statement like "the government should marry same-sex couples (but not polygamists)" to be a "broad principal". That sounds to me more like a benefit sought by a specific interest group. Reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes a principle, but just so you know where I'm coming from, I think of principals as more context-free statements like "laws should not discriminate on the basis of any characteristic irrelevent to their purpose" and "the government should not prohibit or endorse any purely private relationship among consenting adults".

Anyway, you seem to actually concede that any income-equalizing effects aren't actually enough to justify marriage. Government-sponsored marriage, then, is like a pork-barrel spending bill: there's a little something in it for everyone, but ultimately it's an unjustifiable waste.

To answer your specific question: no, I don't concede that abolishing government-endorsed marriage would increase inequality. My evidence is this: when I look back at the bad-old-days of traditional marriage laws, when women were chattel, one problem I don't see are spouses with vastly different standards of living. Even without government-mandated shared-property, most married couples, in practice, chose to share resources. I suspect that, in a modern world without government-sponsored marriage, marriage contracts would look a lot like wills do today. There would be a few boilerplate contracts you could buy at bookshops, fill in with your honey, and get notarized for $10. That might even have the beneficial side-effect that couples actually discuss some of the ramifications of the contract they are entering into.