Seattle PI:

Opponents of same-sex marriage, testifying to a packed Senate hearing, said they will press for a public vote on the issue this fall, even as marriage equality legislation secured a 25th vote in the 49-member Washington State Senate.

"The institution of marriage does not belong to the Legislature: It belongs to the people," Joseph Bachholm of the Family Policy Institute of Washington told the Senate Government Operations Committee.

Christopher Plant of the National Organization for Marriage added: "This is a decision to be left to the people."

... Roman Catholic Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who has urged Catholics to lobby legislators against marriage equality, warned of "the grave challenge this legislation poses to the common good."

"The natural structure of human sexuality orders the transmission of human life through man and woman," said Sartain. "Because only the union of a man and a woman can generate new life, no other human relationship is its equivalent."