Feb
8
Washington State and gay marriage
- Some of the cheering seems a bit premature; not only is it not actually law yet - the governor still has to sign the thing - but it’s likely that it won’t be law even once that happens. Due to the state’s reprehensible referendum system, if opponents can collect enough signatures the bill will first have to be approved by voters in November before it can take effect. It is likely that they will collect enough signatures, and current polling has voters split on the measure. So there’s a 50/50 chance it’ll be overturned, because the voters are awful.
- When I got here I was confused by the Northwest’s resentment at how the rest of the country ignores them, but now I get it. Even Iowa’s efforts on this front were more widely covered than this, it seems like.
- Though even the local news didn’t get to covering it until 8 past, and even then it only briefly mentioned the historicity of the whole thing before getting into how it would affect the governor’s race. (The lead story was the Powell fire; presumably gay marriage would have been first if there were dead white children involved.)
- Capital Hill (Seattle’s gay neighborhood) is utterly quiet right now, just a normal weekday night. There’s certainly none of the celebration we saw in New York when gay marriage passed there.
- But then of course it hasn’t really passed, so etc. etc.
- IDK
