GO WASHINGTON STATE!!! (ref. 71)

Booyah!

I completely agree.  Although Maine was a tremendous disappointment.  And the electoral map in WA really shows the divide...

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/WEI/ResultsByCounty.aspx?ElectionID=32&Race...

That map is really disheartening, Finn.   How can so many people vote to deny others of basic rights?  But i don't want to turn this into a rant.  So I'll just be happy that over half of our citizens voted to approve it. :-)

What the crap Pierce county? I wouldn't expect that out of the Tacoma area.

It's incredibly disheartening.  What are these people thinking?  It's not even about the concept of marriage, it's about denying people comfort and happiness.  What harm does allowing LGB couples to marry do to these people?  This is the one issue that really gets under my skin right now.  Sure, I'd love to see better health care, reduce our military spending and boost our education system, but this -- this is exactly the same kind of bulls**t the civil rights movement fought.  What the hell is wrong with our country?  Man, I'm getting angry just writing this.

being from pierce county, i am a bit disappointed. but you also have to consider that fort lewis and mcchord air force base are in there. although tacoma is becoming more progressive, its certainly no haven for liberals

That elctoral map looked like the Governors race map.

while we do have Tacoma... there are still so many places in Pierce county that are very conservative. Disappointing..

But atleast it passed Pierce county or not!

Hell yes. It's sad that there are still insane, fear mongering, Bible thumping homophobes voting, BUT lamenting their choices won't get us anywhere. Stay positive, keep hope alive, we've made some huge strides lately. I'm so excited things are beginning to change.

Despite the minority, this is a HUGE win for the LGBT community everywhere. Those against gay rights have said that a measure such as Ref. 71 would never hold up to popular vote. Though Prop.8 in California and Q. 1 in Maine were disappointments; Washington has showed that, even though the homophobic conservatives feel the right to speak for the "masses", it is obvious that such measures CAN hold up and be passed by a popular vote.

Thanks be to everyone who remembered to register, vote, and turn in their ballots! :D

One thing I find dissapointing is that whatever the west side decides is what goes. As the map someone posted a link to shows, ALL of eastern washington rejected it, but yet it was still approved. Maybe we should divide into two states? It doesn't matter what happens in the east. Only the west votes ever seem to matter.

You do realize that would completely castrate the east?  This state survives on the tax revenue stream provided by the west, without that, the universities, public services, medicare, and other government supported projects would be dead in the water.

It was a popular vote, still. The majority of the people live in the western part of the state and also happen to have voted to approve Ref. 71. It's not as if we're operating under an Electoral College sort of system with a referendum vote. The fact of the matter is that the majority of voters chose to approve it.

I find the percentage maps to be quite deceiving. : )

Well, the thing is, it's not an electoral vote; that map shows what the majority of the county thought, but what matters is the popular vote, so although it's disheartening, it can also be slightly misleading. The votes of those in the east do matter. There are tooooons of people in Eastern Washington that voted to approve Ref. 71, even though more people in Eastern Washington voted against it.

SHHHHH!!!! Don't tell them that... I want to see Cascadia on the map...

(W. WA + W. OR + N. CA)

Good. But this "anything but marriage" thing still bothers me. It's like saying, "Is this enough? Please? Right? No need for marriage, right? I mean, you're essentially married, except you're not, because that's only for everyone else... But you can at least pretend!"

Just break down the wall already. But legislators and special interest groups will delay full rights for at least another three decades. Cowards.

Yeah, I agree with you.  But looking at how close the vote was, if they had added marriage to it, it all would have failed.  They pretty much got as much as they could.  Social norms take a long time to change, this is a step in the right direction!

Exactly.

I actually think that taking the term "marriage" completely out of state law would make everything easier; if, in legal terms, everything was a "civil union." And then "marriage" was merely a religious, spiritual, or personal term that meant different things for everyone. This would be ideal, IMO.

Best. State. EVAR.

Honestly, Ref 71 failing on the Eastern side of the state is no surprise to me.  I'm from Yakima, kind of middlish south in the east, and being out, and gay there is hard enough.  Trying to convince people to give them rights?  That's another ordeal altogether.  I'm HAPPY that even though it only passed in a few counties, it passed in the entire state.  Eastern Washington is much like Southern Texas where it's all about agriculture.  It's very conservative.  I'd hate to have been home when Obama was elected.  It's part of why I ran as fast as I could to Bellingham. 

Also, this anything but marriage is only a STEP towards equal rights.  Yes, it's not the full thing.  But it PASSED.  Be happy about that.  It's not everything you wanted, but it's something.  We're working on it, but right now, our biggest challenge is for our generation to take full advantage of it's voting power.  We're outnumbered by our grandparent's generation- and they're the ones least likely to vote pro-gay.  Once we take the power from them, LGBT rights will expand rapidly, as well as women's rights.  All we have to do now is keep campaigning as we wait patiently for them do trickle out of the voters pool.

**I am not gay, but have gay friends in Yakima.

Yeah, I'm from Yakima as well.  Before coming up to school, I went to Wal-mart and there were people outside collecting signatures to try and stop the gay marriage bill.  But just as many people, I know are pro so there really is a big divide on the issue.

While the focus of the bill may have been on the LGBT community, we're also forgetting the senior citizens that have domestic partnerships. They need these rights too.

So while the "everything but marriage" bit might irk us, we're definitely taking a HUGE step in the right direction. :)

The best thing you can possibly do to get LGBT rights passed into law, besides voting yourself, is pressuring your friends and family to vote.  Tell them your point of view, but tell them you don't care HOW they vote, just that they do.  Especially people our age, in the 18-25 range who are LEAST likely to vote, we need to convince our peers that their votes DO count, they DO add up, so they need to voice their opinions. 

This is pretty nifty:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/us/12utah.html?hpw

I'm more or less with you on this one.  This is indeed pretty much the same as the racial and sexual discrimination we went through in the past and it's sad that this was even an issue in the first place, but at the same time, I'm proud that we're among the first to take this step forward.  I almost feel like voting for the referendum gives me an opportunity to take a bow.

Still, I don't think this is simply about "denying people comfort and happiness" (hell, ask a stand-up comic and they'd say it was saving their happiness).  This is, in good part, because I don't believe people generally do things for the mere sake of spiting others, but not only that.  It really is an issue deeply embedded in the religious aspect of the term "marriage."  Religion is a tricky entity- I don't think anyone needs to be reminded of how things are playing out in the Middle East.  And they are people just the same as anyone in any other part of the world, including the US.  People will fight and die for their religion if they feel they need to.  If they perceive a threat, they'll try to eliminate it.  And since religion is ideological, the concept that an idea can be just as real as any given object holds just as true, if not truer.  And thus the "threat," whether it has real-world ramifications or not becomes a threat by simply thinking of it as such.  I actually like the idea someone mentioned earlier of making everything in the state a "civil union" and just taking religion out of the picture altogether. (After all, there's supposed to be a separation of church and state in the first place anyway, right?)

Then, again, I have a problem with people trying to push their ideological beliefs on others, and Obama was 100% correct when he stated that this is not a Christian nation. (Ideally, we are a nation that tolerates, that is, does not persecute worshipers of, all religions.)  The nation should not be anchored to the beliefs and will of the church.  Nevertheless, people are having trouble letting go of this and trying to do so would only make them latch on even tighter.  I say take "a marriage that is not called a marriage" for now and wait for things to simmer down.  (Just remember: "A rose by any other name", my friend.)

Being from both Pierce County and Fort Lewis, It is kinda of disheartening to be from a -mostly- closed minded conservative community. But, i've lived 14 years of my life in Tennessee, so I'm kinda used to it, heh

Don't blame conservatives for being uniformly opposed to gay marriage.  It serves no other purpose than to fill you with contempt or judgement when you meet someone who self-identifies as conservative.  I used to assume conservatives were the ones opposing everything equal and wonderful in the world until I realized what a crock of spoon-fed corporate media bullshit it was.  And people are falling for it constantly. 

Anyway, wooohoo WA State!

We're not saying that EVERY conservative is anti-gay and we're not saying that EVERY democrat is pro-gay.  I know some democrats that are really uncomfortable with gays and some republicans that are very pro gay.  It's just that the GENERAL NORM is that republicans aren't pro-gay.  It's a stereotype, and honestly many stereotypes start off with some sort of factual basis.  It's a blanket statement meant to generalize.  I don't judge people based on their political label, i judge them based on their values and actions.

Agreed; not all those who self-identify as conservatives are anti-gay or homophobic.  I've got a friend who is conservative in the old sense of the word; she's very distressed at what the Republican party has become in these recent elections.  She's extremely "get your hands off my income" and "get rid of welfare" and "everyone should have a gun," and she is also very "give my gay friends their right to marriage, dammit!"  Her politics tend to confuse people who think they've got her figured out. 

And on the other side of the spectrum is my imminent father-in-law, who is very liberal and very uncomfortable around gay people, including my fiancee's best friend.  However, I applaud his attitude of "I don't like it, I don't agree with it, but it's none of my business and it shouldn't be any of the government's" and voted to reject Prop 8. 

Me, I agree with a previous poster that "marriage" should be struck from legal terminology.  The legal system should recognize two partners who agree to be a single tax entity and have identified each other as kin, and have made an agreement with the state to comport themselves as such.  "Marriage" should belong to churches and other spiritual groups, much like baptisms and bar/bat mitzvahs.  That way, if religions want to deny their God's approval of a union to two people, they can.  Hell, they can right now--any church can deny any couple that wants to be married in their building or by their pastor.  Churches can feel absolutely free to deny gays the right to marry within their church and "defend the sanctitiy of marriage" within their walls. 

Basically, in a nutshell: marriage should be an agreement between two people and God.  (If God doesn't approve, I'm sure S/He will let them know.)  Civil unions should be an agreement between two people and the state.  End of story.