Monday, February 13, 2012
Gay Marriage Gregoire's Relief
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:22 PM
- E.S.
- "This is signed!"
When all is said and done, bill signings are rather quick affairs with very predictable speeches. (The only slightly unexpected moment at today's marriage bill signing: when a protester slipped in to shout about Jesus, and the crowd quickly drowned him out with cheers.) So I was much more interested in the emotion that Governor Chris Gregoire displayed today.
She's known as one of the colder, more restrained politicians we have in this state, but when she walked into the State Reception Room in the capitol building shortly before noon, to echoing chants of "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" from hundreds of gay citizens—and scores of non-gay supporters of marriage equality—Gregoire's eyes welled up immediately. She was very plainly struggling not to cry as this blast of intense gratitude, along with the historical weight of the moment, hit her and everyone in the room.
At one point during her remarks ("We stood for equality, and we did it together... The bill I'm signing today is simple and clear... Same sex couples will no longer be treated as separate but equal...") Gregoire looked over at one of her daughters, who was standing next to U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, and caught a glimpse of her daughter crying. Instantly, Gregoire was right back to struggling to hold it together, stopping her remarks, looking down at the podium, jokingly scolding her daughter ("I told you not to do that"), and slowly collecting herself.
She stayed for a long time after the bill was signed, posing for pictures, hugging people, shaking hands, giving out what must have been hundreds of souvenir signing pens.
And during all of this, she did not look to me like someone who has—as she claims—just recently overcome her personal struggle with this issue and finally decided to embrace marriage equality. Though that may have been a helpful storyline for this fight, it seemed to me that Gregoire was feeling the profound relief (and, probably, guilt or regret) of a person who in truth felt this day should have come a very long time ago, but also felt her role was to outwardly stay in step with this state's public opinion until statewide polling agreed with her heart.
1
She's always disciplined herself really tightly, for better or worse deciding to hew to her long-term game face and keep touchy-feely stuff out of it - it's only now toward the end of her last term she's indulged. Good for her, and for us.
3
I hope you guys noticed a Roman Catholic governor was happy to sign this into law, to grant marriage equality to her state's citizens.
5
How nice that in the last 30 days of her final legislative session she finally got something done. This dose of goodwill will erode quickly, once they start rolling out the budgets.
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