Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« "Siddown…WALDO." | Donnie Davies: UNMASKED! No, R... »

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Proof That the Democrats Control Olympia

posted by on January 25 at 15:40 PM

I have two hearings to choose from right now.

In senate hearing room 1 it’s: a hearing on a bill for public financing for judicial campaigns.
In senate hearing room 2 it’s: the domestic-partnerships bill.

Truth be told (and as I’ve said before), I’ve got serious problems with the public-financing bill. And, honestly, Stranger staff also has some serious reservations about the DP bill. Namely, why does it discriminate against young people by giving seniors special status to get domestic partnerships at the exclusion of marriage? The special clause for senior DPs not only thumbs its nose at young couples, but also contradicts the bill’s stated purpose of ultimately wanting to institute marriage. (Props to my SECB colleague Annie Wagner for pointing out that contradiction.)

Meanwhile, I just watched Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis and SDOT’s Grace Crunican present their tunnel-lite plan to the very grumpy Senator Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10, La Conner) and her senate transportation committee.

It was just like Joel Horn presenting the slimmed-down monorail plan, which kinda made me sympathetic to Ceis and gang. Not so, it seemed, to the committee. Particularly Haugen, who said sternly that any costs of studying the financial reality of this plan (which Seattle’s Senator Ed Murray demanded, saying Ceis’s plan needed to go through the independent expert review panel) would come out of any money the state was putting toward the project. With that she ended the city’s time.

RSS icon Comments

1

Josh, you do understand the basics of this bill and how strategy works, right? When two 20 year-olds live together and don't get married, they're doing so because they feel like it - not because they're afraid of losing Social Security income that is keeping them alive. You're not comparing apples to apples here at all. Is full equality better? Duh. But how about a step at a time. If the gays can wait decades for a tiny nibble of equality, I think the unmarried shackin' up straight younguns can afford to sit this fight out for now.

Which brings me to point two, the strategery. Including seniors is THE SELL for the moderate-leaning R's that could swing over for this bill. Including all straights just gives them the "this is encouraging kids to live in sin" problem to fuss with. Let's not confuse our hapless GOP friends with too many social issues at one time.

Finally, how does this undermine the goal of marriage equality? That makes no sense at all. This is going to be a long haul, and the point will be made bit by bit, not in one lump with this one bill. Methinks the Stranger staff is just looking for a problem with a good bill.

Posted by switzerblog | January 25, 2007 3:59 PM
2

Why? Because old people vote and young people don't contribute money to campaigns.

That's why. Yeah, there are exceptions, but in general it's true.

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 25, 2007 4:27 PM
3

The problem is a complicated one, and Josh didn't explain it fully. Pedersen and Murray's strategy is to nudge domestic partnerships ever closer to marriage with additional rights added every year (so far, this follows CA's method). Eventually, the idea goes, domestic partnerships will be so close to marriage that the legislature will agree to give full marriage rights to gays and lesbians (so far, CA has not gotten to this phase). But by letting opposite sex seniors enter into domestic partnerships, you're ensuring that there will always be a constituency to retain domestic partnerships as is. These pensioners DO NOT WANT to get married. They will insure that the domestic partnership registry remains in perpetuity, and anti-gay marriage legislators will be able to say, "You have all the rights and privileges of marriage. We shouldn't give you full marriage and dissolve the DP registry, because look at the poor pensioners!" Excluding all opposite-sex couples from the registry, on the other hand, would make it clear that the domestic partnership registry is a second-class version of marriage. It would maintain the idea that gays and lesbians are only entering into domestic partnerships because they are denied the right to marry. It would keep the pressure on.

On the other side of the argument, it should be acknowledged that the legislator who introduced the DP bill in CA (our bill is copied off theirs) originally intended to make all couples, gay and straight, eligible for domestic partnerships. It didn't go to the floor in that form because Governor Gray Davis was uncomfortable with providing an alternative to marriage for straight couples of child-bearing and child-raising age. This reinforces the laughable idea, formulated by the Washington Supreme Court in Andersen, that marriage is meant to encourage procreation.

Ironically, the CA legislator who originally compromised with Davis on the domestic partnership bill now wants to open the registry to all straight couples. Why? Because too many children are being born to couples who aren't married and don't have the protections that marriage implies.

I'm not making idle objections to this bill. I believe it was copied mindlessly from the CA version without thinking about the circumstances and political climate here in Washington. I would be much, much happier if the bill either excluded or included all straight couples. Let's not perpetuate discrimination in the guise of correcting it.

Posted by annie | January 25, 2007 4:28 PM
4

Annie, your point is noted, but this legislation is aimed not at allowing anyone sharing a home to have these rights (a nightmare that needs little explanation), but to grant them to people who A) are legally barred from them at this time, or who B) are forced to choose between these rights and the only remaining income keeping food on the table.

Young hetero couples are not faced with these concerns. If they CHOOSE not to marry despite no obstacles to their doing so, it does not seem to be of prime concern to the state if they have these rights. In their case, they are choosing to waive these rights.

That said, I think eventually we'll expand the bill just as California is doing because enough young angry single hets will be griping about it as you and Josh are, and young angry single hets have some voting clout, and hey, equality's a good thing. But let's not act like we're enshrining "discrimination" with this bill - that's just silly.

Posted by switzerblog | January 25, 2007 5:41 PM
5

Annie and Josh,

I guess I'm confused. If you want to marry your opposite sex partners, then you can head down to the county office with $56 and voila 'till death do you part.

In fact, you can dance in there with a stranger off the street and walk out with a marriage license so long as your naughty bits don't match.

I would love to marry my partner of nine years but it's not legal and won't be for quite awhile apparently.

The point is that you have a choice - we do not have a choice. Why would you want to settle for second class DP when you could have marriage?

Posted by Original Andrew | January 25, 2007 8:42 PM
6

No one I know is settling for second class status. But progress in our lifetimes is far better than perfection.

Same sex couple are, in fact, manifestly different than same sex couples. I like that. Embrace it.

Give people equal rights. If all that's possible is a half loaf at a time, that's far better than no loaf. Just keep demanding a full loaf.

If 1400 rights are currently denied same sex couples, and those same 1400 rights are ultimately not denied, call it that equality under the law.

If you want to call it marriage because you are worried about 1st class 2nd class seats, fine. Just don't make everybody else call it that and we might find equality a whole lot faster.

Posted by thor | January 25, 2007 9:23 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).