After winning approval from both the Washington state House and Senate in recent weeks, a historic piece of gay-marriage legislation went before Washington governor Chris Gregoire today for her signature. Signing the bill in the presence of multiple gay-rights activists, Gregoire said, "I'm proud our same-sex couples will no longer be treated as separate but equal." Opponents are vowing to fight the law before it's set to take effect June 7, but this was nonetheless a big victory for the cause of gay marriage, which frequently finds itself being fought in courts and via ballot measures, rather than arising wholly out of a state legislature as it did last year in New York.
Just last week, of course, a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared California's Proposition 8 to have been unconstitutional, upholding a ruling in a lower court in a narrow decision that is likely to be appealed itself. And this week, a similar bill to Washington's was passed by the New Jersey senate and heads to the Assembly, where it's expected to pass on Thursday however Republican governor Chris Christie has already said he'll veto it.
The (Christian) challengers to the Washington state law are hoping to get the measure delayed pending a statewide vote in November, obviously hoping that there would not be majority support for the law in a general election.
And in related, careful-what-you-wish-for news, the lesbian couple whose 2008 case in the California Supreme Court helped legalized gay marriage across the state for that brief, glorious moment, are getting divorced. The couple, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, were together nearly 18 years, and Tyler recently said, "we're just ordinary people. We shouldn't be expected to have a higher bar than anybody else."
