Washington Becomes The 7th State To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage has made its way to the West Coast:
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Gov. Chris Gregoire has signed into law a bill that legalizes gay marriage in Washington state, making it the nation’s seventh to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
It’s a historic moment, but same-sex couples can’t walk down the aisle just yet.
The law takes effect June 7, but opponents are already mounting challenges on multiple fronts.
Opponents planned to file a challenge Monday that could put the law on hold pending the outcome of a November vote.Separately, an initiative was filed at the beginning of the session that opponents of gay marriage say could lead to the new law being overturned.
Gregoire signed the bill Monday morning. It passed the House on Wednesday, a week after Senate approval.
After Gregoire announced her support earlier this year, it was largely inevitable that this would become law. As for the proposed initiative, last week’s ruling from the 9th Circuit with regard to Proposition 8 in California would suggest that such a move would be unconstitutional.
Good for Washington state! I hope the law takes effect without much controversy.
I’m cautiously hopeful that this will be the final push for WA State (once the referendums get dealt with). There have been several incremental steps towards marriage equality in the WA legislature over the past several years and some pushback via referendum that, if I recall correctly, has been largely unsuccessful.
Satan will rise from the fiery pit!
Fortunately, it’s Washington, so the rain will dowse his infernal flame him in seconds.
It is Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. It is Jack and Jill, not Joan and Jill.
Worst. Troll. Ever.
@Franklin: Seriously. Combining the Bible and a nursery rhyme? It’s not even worth my time to type the joke out. Put some effort into it, Delmar.
It’s Delmar and his cousin Bobby Sue, not Delmar and his cousin Billy Bob.
I’m embarrassed that Washington beat us (Oregon) to joining the 21st century.
What will be the next socon retrenchment? Will they only have abortion?
Cool, Santorum will soon be able to come out of the closet.
This should be it but the homophobes will be out in front of the local Walmart gathering signatures while spouting their hateful crap to anyone who`ll listen.
@Barb Hartwell: Hey why am I being deleted?
“Release the Kraken”
This has been in the back of my brain, nagging at me all day.
I meant douse. Not dowse.
Because that’s the kind of stuff that bugs me. Nope: no life at all, really.
@michael reynolds:
Ah, don’t sweat it. I’m taking Spanish now, and in English where we double the consonant, difficult, the Spanish, being rational, only use the single letter, difícil. It occurred to me that I’ve been writing in Spanish all my life… (Further on the rational front, there’s none of the ph=f nonsense, it’s just plain ol’ f – filosofía.)
Great language.
@sam:
Of course, English does have one great advantage over most European languages: it dropped the silly convention of arbitrarily dividing inanimate objects into various genders, which cannot really be determined other than by memorization.
Yeah, there is that…
I’m in WA. This won’t take effect until June 7.
But I drove past the local Rainbow Center yesterday about 7PM and there was a big party going on. I won’t sign a petition against it.