Nicole Beges and Mackenzie Stout, two straight girls in law school at Seattle University, have spent the last couple weekends in gay bars, registering new voters and talking about gay marriage. Just about everywhere theyâve gone, theyâve found gay people who didnât even know that gay marriage is on the ballot. Beges went to Qdoba on Broadway recently, and there were âtwo guys working there, gay as Christmas, and I was like, âI spent last night working on Referendum 74,â and they were like, âWhatâs that?ââ
Beges was standing inside the gay menâs fetish bar the Cuff as she told me this. Sheâs 25 years old. She had a clipboard under one arm with voter registration forms and a stack of blank pledges to Washington United for Marriage to vote "approve" for Referendum 74 (with a box to check if someone wants to volunteer). Standing next to her was Stout, who is 24 and has already done some phone-banking for Referendum 74, including a memorable interaction with an Eastern Washington man who insisted that gay marriage being passed would mean legalizing incest. Looking around the Cuff, Stout added, âPeople are uneducated about political goings on and I think thatâs a problem.â
âI met two guys at CC Attleâs the other night, two guys whoâd been together for 15 years, and they were against gay marriage,â Beges said. How come? âI canât tell you why. Something about the dollar crashing?â
âYou get so used to the status quo or something,â Stout said.
âMy personal opinion?â Beges said. âItâs not about you. Itâs a civil rights issue.â
"We don't have gay parking. We don't have gay lunch. It's marriage. It's not gay marriage," Stout said. âPeople say, âWell, I donât want to get married.â Wouldnât you rather decide you donât want to get married rather than the law telling you you canât?â
Beges added, âIf I ever shoot out kids, I want them to say: âHoly shit, when you were 25 gays couldnât get married?ââ
The Cuff was just one stop among many. They were on a bar-crawl organized by Josh Castle, M. J. Romero, and Jason Jacobs, three gay guys with day jobs, a little bit of free time, and a knack for political organizing. Romero told me, âWe call this Project Low Hanging Fruit.â
He said the impetus was realizing how many gay people, especially younger gay people, werenât registered, didnât have political opinions, and didnât know about Referendum 74. A bar-hop was the perfect way to reach them, especially because it doesnât cost anything: they just set up a Facebook page and called bars in advance to tell them they were coming. A lot of bars donât want people with clipboards walking around talking to their customers, but since gay-marriage is on the ballot, gay bars have been receptive, waiving the cover charge, etc. (Other bars? Not so much. After visiting Pony and before getting down to Q, Beges and Stout decided to stop into the Elysian to try their hand with a straight crowd. The first guy Stout talked to was not registered to vote. He filled out a voter registration form while she talked about Referendum 74, and then he looked at her chest and then up at her face. A bartender leaned over and said, âWhat are you doing?â After Stout explained, the bartender said, âOutside. Sorry.â)
- Shane Phillips, straight guy fighting for gay marriage: "If I have children, absolutely I want them to be able to get married if they're gay."
On yet another night of the bar crawl, a straight guy named Shane Phillips who works in a lab at UW, got into it with a gay guy at Pony who âwas thinking about not votingâ for gay marriage, with the thinking being that homos tend to be more promiscuous than straights. Which boggled Phillipsâs mind. âJust because some people wonât take it seriously, or might abuse this right, doesnât mean it shouldnât be available to everyone,â Phillips reflected a few minutes later at Madison Pub. âI gain something if I live in a society that actually has equal rights. And itâs also not just about me. If I have children, absolutely I want them to be able to get married if theyâre gay.â It was the night before the mail-in voter registration deadline. I asked Phillips what he was going to do once it was too late to register new voters. âI am going to do phone banking, but Iâm not looking forward to it. Iâm not confrontational. Iâm not even very outgoing. Iâm just drunk,â he said, and sipped his beer.