Big vote on marriage equality tomorrow

In a mat­ter of hours, Wash­ing­ton’s Sen­ate is set to take up Ed Mur­ray’s bill, SB 6239, to make mar­riage equal­i­ty the law of the land across the Ever­green State. At least twen­ty-five sen­a­tors (includ­ing some Repub­li­cans) have already com­mit­ted to vote in favor of the bill, so it is expect­ed to pass.

How­ev­er, if you are a Wash­ing­ton­ian, it is still a good idea to let your sen­a­tor know that you sup­port this impor­tant civ­il rights legislation.

Don’t know who your law­mak­ers are? Plug in your address and find out!

A com­pan­ion bill is advanc­ing in the House and is expect­ed to pass there as well; the House also has the option of sim­ply adopt­ing SB 6239, which would send the leg­is­la­tion to Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire’s desk. Gre­goire announced her sup­port of mar­riage equal­i­ty sev­er­al weeks ago and is pre­pared to sign the bill.

The right wing has promised to force a pub­lic vote on mar­riage equal­i­ty by launch­ing a ref­er­en­dum cam­paign once the bill has been signed. 120,557 valid sig­na­tures are required to qual­i­fy a ref­er­en­dum for the 2012 bal­lot, which means oppo­nents of mar­riage equal­i­ty will min­i­mal­ly need to gath­er some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 170,000 sig­na­tures total (to off­set invalid or dupli­cate signatures).

If a ref­er­en­dum qual­i­fies for the bal­lot, the ear­li­est that mar­riage equal­i­ty could become the law of the land would be in Decem­ber 2012, fol­low­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion results. (A law sub­ject to ref­er­en­dum does not go into effect; instead, it is placed on hold for the dura­tion of the election).

Read­ers should keep in mind that ref­er­en­da work dif­fer­ent­ly than ini­tia­tives. If the right wing forces a ref­er­en­dum on mar­riage equal­i­ty, those of us want­i­ng to keep the law will need to vote to “approve” the referendum.

(Yes, we know… it’s confusing).

Per­ma­nent Defense will be work­ing to track the right wing’s sig­na­ture dri­ve once a ref­er­en­dum cam­paign is launched. We’ll have more details on how you can help in the com­ing weeks.