Repealing Washington’s Domestic Partnership Laws Will FAIL

Washington State awarded its gays “everything but marriage” last month, expanding domestic partnership laws to give you same-sex loving freaks all the rights of straight people, just not the word marriage — nor the desire to insert penises in vaginas. So, what, you thought everybody would be happy and move on?

No.

Namely, Washington Values Alliance president Larry Stickney hasn’t. You’ll remember Stickney as the guy behind the misleading ad campaign that ran before the legislature voted on SB 5688, which provided the new rights.

Now he’s making good on a promise to get Washington’s citizens to vote on a referendum that would overturn the expanded domestic partnerships law. Stickney’s effort is called Referendum 71, and despite what his camp would have you believe, his “partners” in saving marriage aren’t banding behind him. Folks like Pastor Joe Fuiten, a director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, are in fact against 71. And according to Fuiten, so too is the head of Human Life of Washington and the state director of Concerned Women for America. Bystanders expect these organizations to work together on their anti-tolerance measures.

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The Washington Values Alliance on Saturday published 10 reasons why organizers should work to pass the referendum. Among them: “By running the referendum now, we will not be taking something away from someone. Instead, we are bringing a controversial proposed law to the people of Washington State for ratification or denial.” LOL, right?

But in an email to his supporters, Fuiten listed all the reasons why now is not the right time for Referendum 71. The Slog paraphrases: “Primarily: A referendum would lose. “Both the polls that I have done plus what others have done consistently show us behind to a considerable degree,” he says. Second: Due to large voter turnout last year, the referendum would require 20,000 more signatures than in 2006, when Tim Eyman failed to gather enough signatures to qualify a referendum for the ballot to repeal the gay civil-rights bill. Third: People don’t care about taking away gay rights in this damned economy. Which takes us to the fourth reason: “The economic downturn has impacted a number of people who have been very supportive of this type of effort in the past,” he writes. But, Fuiten thus implies, if folks did have the money to invest in stripping rights from gay families, they would be all for it—what better way to spend your last few cents than impinging the financial and insurance rights of struggling gay families, right?—but folks don’t have the money. Fifth: If they lose a referendum, it would illustrate what a bunch of out-of-touch bigots they really are, and then the homo-lovin’ legislature would surely legalize same-sex marriage.”

Disorganized planning? Disjointed leadership? Unclear means to obtain your goals? Thankfully, this sounds as dysfunctional as whatever happened when we were fighting Prop 8.