Bills to legalize same-sex marriage have been introduced in the House and Senate, sponsored by two gay lawmakers who have pushed for gay rights measures in past years. The bills will have their first public hearings tomorrow, before a Senate committee in the morning and a House committee in the afternoon. While gay marriage bills have been introduced in Washington state before, this is the first time the issue will receive a public hearing.
“If there’s one word to sum up where Washington is on marriage equality, it’s momentum,’’ said Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.
Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. Lawmakers in New Jersey and Maryland are expected to debate it this year as well.
Washington state, along with several others, including California, Oregon, and New Jersey, have laws that either recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford same-sex couples some or nearly all of the rights to marriage.
The debate over same-sex marriage in Washington state has changed significantly since lawmakers passed Washington’s Defense of Marriage Act in 1998. The constitutionality of the act was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2006, but earlier that year, a gay civil rights measure passed after nearly 30 years of failure, signaling a change of mindset in the Legislature.
The quick progression of domestic partnership laws in the state came soon after, with a domestic partnership law in 2007, and two years of expansion that culminated in 2009 with the so-called “everything but marriage law’’ that was upheld by voters after opponents filed a referendum to challenge it.
That strategy was spearheaded by Democratic Senator Ed Murray, a gay lawmaker from Seattle who has led the push for gay civil rights and domestic partnerships and who is sponsoring the Senate marriage bill.
“The culture changes and the politics follows,’’ Murray said. “The most political act that changed the culture wasn’t in Olympia, it wasn’t me. It was people coming out to their families, to their workplace. That’s what’s changed people’s minds.’’
The state Senate is now just one vote shy of having enough backing to approve the bill, with a half-dozen lawmakers remaining uncommitted.
