Washington Gov. to Sign Marriage Bill Today

choz

Posted on Advocate.com February 13, 2012 12:30:27 PM ET

Washington Gov. to Sign Marriage Bill Today
By Andrew Harmon
Washington Marriage 390x | Advocate.com

Washington governor Chris Gregoire will sign into law a marriage equality
bill at a historic Monday ceremony in Olympia.

The Associated Press reports that the governor will sign the bill, recently
passed by state House and Senate lawmakers, at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time in
the state capitol’s reception room. A live stream of the signing ceremony
will be broadcast here.

“I knew now was the time to face it,” Gov. Gregoire said in an interview
with The Advocate last month after throwing her political weight behind the
bill. “And as I faced it, both as a mom and as a wife, and as a Catholic,
as a governor, and wrote it down on a piece of paper, the logic of it all
fell into the words that I put down there.”

The law, which would make Washington the seventh state plus the District of
Columbia where marriage rights for same-sex couples are legal, will go into
effect on June 7, the AP reports. Social conservative groups have vowed to
collect the requisite signatures needed to put a referendum or an initiative
on the November ballot.

Such a move would almost certainly be challenged in court if antigay
advocates were successful, given the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling
last week that California’s Proposition 8 violated the Fourteenth Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution when it took away the right to marry for same-sex
couples.

In Washington, LGBT rights have been under attack by a ballot measure
campaign before. In 2009, following passage of an “everything but marriage
” domestic partnership bill, antigay groups sought to repeal the
legislation via Referendum 71. The effort failed, however, with 53% of
voters opposing it.

Passage of the bill is likely to prompt a response from Republican
presidential candidates who reiterated their opposition to marriage equality
during appearances at the Conservative Political Action Conference in
Washington, D.C. last week. Rick Santorum will be speaking with marriage
equality opponents in Olympia today a few hours after the governor signs the
bill, followed by a campaign rally at the Washington Historical Museum in
Tacoma at 7 p.m.