Same-sex rights might expand

Lawmakers work on 1,900 page draft of partnership bill

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published January 04, 2009

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Another battle over the rights of same-sex couples is headed to the state Legislature this year as activists try to expand rights available under Washington's 11/2-year-old domestic-partnership registry.

That registry has 4,892 couples with either two members of the same gender or one member who's 62 or older. Nearly 200 rights are included, including the right to hospital visits, inheriting through community property laws, and the power to make decisions about a loved one's remains.

Democratic Sen. Ed Murray of Seattle says he thinks it still is too early to push for full marriage rights, an effort that suffered setbacks at the polls in California, Arizona and Florida this fall. Leaders with Equal Rights Washington say also a Washington referendum could be premature, undoing any same-sex-marriage law that might pass in this state.

Murray instead plans to focus on adding rights to the partnership registry, which lawmakers created in 2007 as a step toward a long-range goal of "marriage equality." One draft of the rights bill is cumbersome, running close to 1,900 pages, and it deals with pensions, parenting issues and taxes.

"We view the domestic partnership as a multiyear process to engage the citizens and the Legislature in a discussion about what our families are about and what the issues are about," Murray said in an interview, adding that he plans to introduce a same-sex-marriage bill, as he does most years.

Opponents including the Faith and Freedom Network are getting ready to fight the domestic-partnership bill — as well as same-sex marriage, if Murray's other marriage-rights bill starts moving.

"If Ed Murray is able to coerce or somehow convince enough people to pass his bill, we first will lobby hard against it," said Gary Randall, a leader of Faith and Freedom. "But we also will mount a massive statewide effort to defeat it at the polls if it goes that far. … We're already organizing perchance that would happen. We are organizing a district-by-district effort to defeat it."