A referendum on gay marriage in Washington state has qualified for the ballot.
The secretary of state's office announced Tuesday that Referendum 74 passed the signature-verification process that has been taking place since last week.
Sponsors turned in 247,331 signatures, far more than the minimum of 120,577 valid voter signatures required.
... The referendum seeks to overturn the measure allowing same-sex marriage in the state. That law was passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year. The law was supposed to take effect last Thursday but was put on hold once the signatures were turned in last Wednesday.
National groups, including the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, have said they'll aggressively fight to strike down Washington's new law.
PreserveMarriageWashington is now rolling out the next stage of pro-marriage activism and volunteer opportunities. Go check it out!
25 Comments
Beautifully done!
Gee, I guess they got that whole signature thing all squared away jiffy-quick.
GO WA!
Your will be the best win of them all, because the opposition imagines they have a chance
@Rick DeLano
It truly will be a startling win.
Now we just got to put more conservatives in Congress to sweeten the deal.
Glad they get to vote unlike in MA where the vote was denied.
Great news from WA!
John,
NOM (or earlier versions of NOM) have had over 8 years to replace the MA legislature with people who would put marriage on the ballot in that state.
They haven't done it.
GO WA!
Great news! Mormon-owned Marriott now offers gay weddings. The downtown Seattle Marriott will be a great location!
http://www.marriott.com/marriott/marriott-gay-travel/gay-wedding-venues.mi
"Mormon-owned Marriott now offers gay weddings." "Gay" weddings? What, will they be conducting some sort of sexual preference test? How about same-sex straight couples, will they be eligible for a Marriott "wedding" too?
"Great news! Mormon-owned Marriott now offers gay weddings"
That is great news.
More money for the Mormon Church.
>>...now offers gay weddings.
"Gay"
1a : happily excited : merry
b : keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits
Well, seeing as how "gay" was originally defined - and still is - I would certainly hope weddings are "gay"!
Seriously folks, we've got to reclaim the meaning of this word. When we passively allowed this word to be redefined and its meaning to be hijacked to support an agenda, we shouldn't be surprised when attempts are made to also hijack words like "marriage" to support the same agenda as well.
Please, everyone - and especially NOM - use "gay" more frequently to mean happily excited and, together, we can reclaim it's original intended meaning. At the very least, we can keep it from being completely lost to this agenda.
Examples:
"Upon delivering the needed signatures to get the referendum on the ballot, the marriage supporters involved in the effort were feeling quote gay about their success."
Here's one to save for Nov. 3...
"As the news networks began projecting Romney's win last night, marriage defenders across the nation - and around the world - broke out in gay applause."
"Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspired to make 'em Great;
And Virtue, who from Politicks
Had learn'd a Thousand cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the common Good."
Baron von Mandeville, "Fable of the Bees"
Excellent, Rick!
Little Ricky, come join us in this century.
Pete,
You are stuck back in the time of Nero. If you are of the opinion that the dark ages were the golden age of man then you just might be a "homosexual."
Pete, aren't you at least slightly embarrassed to be so effortlessly reduced to juvenile insults?
@Dan
Your entire post has been hyperlinked but not clickable.
That's wierd.
I will vote no.
Pete's comment on Marriott is off topic, but worth mentioning nevertheless.
Marriott International Inc. is not “Mormon owned.” It is a publicly traded stock (symbol MAR) on the New York Stock Exchange, not a privately held corporation.
Marriott International does not offer or perform “weddings.” It offers “wedding venues,” a subtle, but real difference. It will rent you a function room for this and all sorts of functions.
As a public accommodation it would probably be illegal for them to refuse to offer the room. The marketing of their services to the LGBT community is therefore perfectly understandable. If I owned their stock (I do not except via mutual funds) I would not object.
I stay at Marriott properties a lot. I have no plans to change that.
I some ways I am rather libertarian. This is a non-issue for me.
I completely agree with Publius #20.
We live in a pluralistic society, and homosexuals have very many problems without unnecessarily adding to them.
If two homosexuals wish to celebrate some private ritual of commitment, why should they be denied this?
It cannot be denied that God has made us free, since we will all give an account.
There is no slight implication of approval, or acquiescence, in such rituals or unions, in the mere fact that space is made available, for rent, just as to anyone else.
Civilization's foundation- marriage- first having been secured (please God this shall have occurred after the November election), a decent accommodation in consideration of the humanity of the homosexual- since they choose to define themselves so completely in this strange way- can be prudently made.
Total victory on the marriage front is absolutely indispensable first.
"If two homosexuals wish to celebrate some private ritual of commitment, why should they be denied this?"
As long as children can learn to be homosexual -and there is no reason to believe that this is not so - I think there is a line that needs to be drawn between private acts and public advertising of such acts.
That's my problem with the Lawrence v. Texas case: the intent was to legalize private acts of homosexual sodomy, the result was to legalize public discussion and even promotion of homosexual sodomy. This is how the homosexualists work: they take private matters and push to make them public; and we all have to be subjected to that which we find morally offensive or that we do not want our children exposed to.
Overcame:
Your point regarding the strategy of the homosexualist movement- to secure victories in court based on privacy rights, and then use the decision as the basis to expand these "rights" into public affirmation of the homosexualist agenda.
However, Lawrence is settled law, and we are decades away at least from conditions under which it might be reconsidered.
At the end of this war lies a peace.
It is not yet in view but it will be, possibly as soon as November if we run the table.
To make a peace requires either total vanquishment of the opposition, or else a settlement that respects, at least, the minimum interest of the vanquished in reaching an accommodation.
The settlement must be seen, ultimately, to have been in the actual interest of the vanquished.
We can all draw the line at different places, but it is good to at least begin to think about these things, because we have a chance this fall to deliver a devastating defeat to pseudo-marriage.
"Lawrence is settled law"
Yeah, well so was Bowers v. Hardwick just 16 years before Lawrence overturned it. A conservative Court and a challenge by the Catholic Church on religious protection grounds could do the trick.
There was peace prior to Lawrence; homosexuality was in the closet, homosexuals were having sex, everyone knew it, and everyone knew who the homosexual were based on their adopted behavior. The peace ended when the homosexuals decided that everyone needed to celebrate homosexual acts, as if they were something worthy of celebration. Hence, Lawrence v. Texas and its SS"M" progeny.
Overcame, there is no logical connection between Lawrence and ssm.
Even Kennedy stated in Lawrence that the decision doesn’t speak to whether states must grant recognition to any relationships homosexuals seek to enter.
Perhaps the homosexual lobby did see the criminalization of their sexual relationships as an impediment to world domination. But there is far too much stock put into the idea that when society disregards conduct it must then grant support to that conduct.
As stated in Hernandez v. Robles (2006), “Plaintiffs here do not, as the petitioners in Lawrence did, seek protection against State intrusion on intimate, private activity. They seek from the courts access to a State-conferred benefit that the Legislature has rationally limited to opposite-sex couples.”
I also like how SCOTUS put it in Maher v. Roe (1977), “There is a basic difference between direct state interference with a protected activity and state encouragement of an alternative activity consonant with legislative policy. Constitutional concerns are greatest when the State attempts to impose its will by force of law; the State's power to encourage actions deemed to be in the public interest is necessarily far broader.”
Basically, the idea that Lawrence in any way mandates ssm, or any other item on the LGBT agenda, is quite risible.
There’s a *big* difference between saying “Leave me alone.” and “Give me benefits.”