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Coalition’s Efforts To Put Marriage Equality On WA Ballot Fails

One effort to put Washington’s new marriage-equality law up to a public vote in November has failed to garner enough signatures to qualify for a referendum.

Stephen Pidgeon, who is running for Attorney General in the Evergreen State, admitted yesterday that the Faith Coalition was more than 140,000 signatures short of the 241,153 needed to get Initiative 1192, which defined marriage as solely between one man and one woman, by Friday’s deadline.

“I hate to say it,  but we’re just not going to cross the threshold,” Pidgeon told The News Tribune. “We’re not going to make it. This measure is not going to be on the ballot.”

It’s hardly time to pop open the champagne, though: Referendum 74, a separate initiative calling for voters to reject same-sex marriage, has qualified for the November 6 ballot.

Taking the high road (snicker), Pidgeon blamed proponents of Referendum 74 for killing his initative. “I’m just going to say that the well was severely poisoned… We were killed by friendly fire. There were activists working with R-74 [sponsors] telling people to burn our petitions, to throw them in the trash, that they would be worthless—that it would be overturned by the Ninth Circuit [court].” Pidgeon—who runs DecaLogos International,  a group that “advocates for God-given human rights as they are established by the Ten Commandments”—also blamed R-74 backers for his coalition’s paltry coffers: “It’s about fundraising, my friends,” he told reporters.

Please, keep up the infighting—it makes our work easier!

And speaking of fundraising, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and current CEO Steve Ballmer each donated $100,000 to boost efforts to keep Washington’s marriage-equality law intact. Maybe you have a few bucks to spare?

 

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