Governor Chris Gregoire announces support for full marriage equality in 2012

In a major boost to Wash­ing­ton Unit­ed for Mar­riage’s efforts to make Wash­ing­ton the sev­enth state where mar­riage equal­i­ty is the law of the land, Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire this morn­ing declared her full sup­port for leg­is­la­tion to over­turn the state’s dis­crim­i­na­to­ry Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) and per­mit gay and les­bian cou­ples to legal­ly wed — as they now can in six oth­er states.

“It’s time, it’s the right thing to do, and I will intro­duce a bill to do it,” Gre­goire said at a press con­fer­ence in Olympia, flanked by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jamie Ped­er­sen and Marko Liias, along with Sen­a­tor Ed Mur­ray. “I say that as a wife, a moth­er, a stu­dent of the law, and above all as a Wash­ing­ton­ian with a life­long com­mit­ment to equal­i­ty and free­dom. Some say domes­tic part­ner­ships are the same as mar­riage. That’s a ver­sion of the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ‘sep­a­rate but equal’ argument.”

“Our gay and les­bian fam­i­lies face the same hur­dles as het­ero­sex­u­al fam­i­lies — mak­ing ends meet, choos­ing what school to send their kids to, find­ing some­one to grow old with, stand­ing in front of friends and fam­i­ly and mak­ing a life­time com­mit­ment,” the gov­er­nor added.

“For all cou­ples, a state mar­riage license is very impor­tant. It gives them the right to enter into a mar­riage con­tract in which their legal inter­ests, and those of their chil­dren if any, are pro­tect­ed by well-estab­lished civ­il law.”

The gov­er­nor told reporters she believes the state is ready for mar­riage equal­i­ty, not­ing that Wash­ing­ton has been a jour­ney towards full civ­il rights for peo­ple of all sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions for more than half a decade now.

In ear­ly 2006, the Leg­is­la­ture enact­ed leg­is­la­tion ban­ning dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. That was fol­lowed by a bill estab­lish­ing domes­tic part­ner­ships in 2007, and anoth­er bill expand­ing domes­tic part­ner­ships (the “every­thing but mar­riage” law) in 2009.

Vot­ers upheld “every­thing but mar­riage” in Novem­ber of 2009 by approv­ing Ref­er­en­dum 71, and pub­lic opin­ion research sug­gests a major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans would be will­ing to vote to change the law to allow LGBT cou­ples to marry.

We at NPI thank Gov­er­nor Gre­goire for tak­ing this coura­geous, prin­ci­pled stand… we can’t applaud it enough. We wish she would do the same on oth­er issues. If Gre­goire would only renounce aus­ter­i­ty the way she renounced the sep­a­rate but equal argu­ment against full mar­riage equal­i­ty this morn­ing, she could end her sec­ond term as gov­er­nor on a high note, which we’d very much like to see.

POSTSCRIPT: The full text of Gre­goire’s pre­pared remarks is avail­able here.