Referendum 71 was filed by Larry Stickney, president of the Washington Values Alliance. Supporters need to get more than 120,500 valid voter signatures by July 25 in order to qualify for the November ballot.

Stickney said he was filing the referendum on behalf of a broad-based coalition, saying that they were going to “do all we can to turn this back.”

Stickney refused to identify what other groups were part of the coalition, saying that a press release would be sent out later in the day.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign the bill, Senate Bill 5688, into law within the next two weeks. The bill passed the Legislature last month.

The filing of the referendum delays the July 26 start of the law until the signatures are counted. If opponents qualify for the ballot, the law is delayed until the results of the November election.

The bill expands on previous Washington state domestic partnership laws by adding such partnerships to all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are mentioned. The statutes range from labor and employment rights to pensions and other public employee benefits.

The underlying domestic partnership law, which Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, spearheaded two years ago, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Last year, lawmakers expanded that law to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.

“While it’s regrettable that a referendum is being filed to undo the progress we made this session to treat gay and lesbian families the same as married families, I don’t believe that voters will decide in November to take away rights from anyone,” Murray said in a statement e-mailed to reporters Monday.

As of Monday, more than 5,300 domestic partnership registrations had been filed in Washington since July 2007.

Read the rest over at the Seattle Times

Via The Oregonian:
What, exactly, are registered domestic partners? I used to think I knew. And until last week, one Northeast Portland couple — call them Luis and Patrick — thought so, too.

Luis is 37 and grew up in Texas. Patrick, 55, graduated from Wilson High and Portland State. Long ago, Patrick heard you should spend four seasons with someone to test love. So that’s what they did. Spend summer, fall, winter and spring together. In June 2008, they registered their domestic partnership. “It’s very comforting to make a commitment where you know someone wants to be with you for eternity,” Patrick said Tuesday.

And even more comforting if everyone else knows what a “domestic partnership” means, too. They were told it would convey legal protections under state law roughly equivalent to those of spouses. But gatekeepers actually get to define the term. In a moment of crisis, earth-shaking decisions can depend on what the gatekeepers know.

Or think they know.

Last week, a nurse in Oregon Health & Science University’s intensive care unit shut the gate on Patrick. The nurse said he couldn’t go into the intensive care unit to be with Luis, even though Luis at that moment was not expected to live.

Luis has AIDS, but doesn’t want his employer to know that. (For that reason, he asked that we not use his whole name or his partner’s last name.) As a result of his disease, Luis has a compromised immune system. Recently, Luis developed a pneumonia-like condition in which his lungs were filling up, and he had difficulty breathing. He felt he was suffocating.

Patrick took Luis to OHSU, and not only was he admitted to intensive care, Luis had to be placed on a ventilator. On Tuesday, April 14, things became very, very dicey. Luis was out of it. It was just at that moment that a nurse refused to let Patrick back into Luis’s room. “We shouldn’t have you in the room as his friend,” the nurse told Patrick. “Do you know how I reach his next of kin?”

“I’m his registered domestic partner,” Patrick told her. “Same as husband and wife.” But the nurse was insistent that only a family member could fill out the forms and make the decisions that needed to be made for Luis.

Patrick had no idea what to do. Frantic, he grabbed a copy of the “Gay Yellow Pages” and started dialing attorneys’ phone numbers. He finally connected to attorney Beth A. Allen.

Read the rest here.

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons says he would veto a pending legislative proposal aimed at giving same-sex domestic partners the rights and benefits that Nevada offers to married couples.

Asked about the measure now under consideration in the state Senate, the Republican governor says he would reject it if it reaches his desk because, “I just don’t believe in it.”

SB283 was authored by Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, an openly gay state lawmaker who says it was amended to ensure that public employers wouldn’t have be required to provide health care benefits to a staffer’s partner.

However, the bill doesn’t prohibit a public or private employer from voluntarily providing such benefits.

Elected leaders approved the new domestic partner registry Monday night. St. Louis, Kansas City and Jackson County already have such registries.

The legal recognition can allow partners to participate in health care decisions, burial arrangements and other matters. The law is not equivalent to legalizing same-sex marriage, and City Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe pointed out that private employers don’t have to follow the registry.

While this is a big step for another city in Missouri, once you leave city limits you have no partnership rights. So imagine you and your partner drive an hour away and get in a car accident. You now have no rights in making medical decisions for your partner.

Supporters of the bill said it offers same-sex couples fairness that has been denied them under the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.

“You have denied us that right,” said bill sponsor Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of six openly gay lawmakers in the Legislature. “Do not deny us the right to care for our families and build our lives.”

The bill passed on a mostly party-line 30-18 vote and now heads to the House. The Senate rejected two Republican amendments, including one that would have sent the measure to voters.

[...]

The bill expands on previous domestic partnership laws by adding reference to partnerships alongside all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are mentioned, statutes ranging from labor and employment to pensions and other public employee benefits.

Read the entire story here.

Supporters of the bill did a last-minute rewrite to remove references that could be construed as marriage-related, but that wasn’t enough to win the necessary votes.

Ten Democrats joined the chamber’s 15 Republicans to defeat the bill 25-17.

“I’m disappointed by the Senate’s actions today in defeating what is fundamentally an issue of civil rights and equality,” said Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who has been pushing the legislation for several years.

The bill has gotten snared in the Senate for the past couple of years, although the House has passed it previously.

It would have allowed gay or straight unmarried couples to register as domestic partners and have the same legal protections and benefits as married couples. [GRW Ed note: Other than those pesky 1200 federal rights and responsibilities]

There are still three weeks left in the legislative session, but it appeared unlikely the measure could be revived.

“If you’re mad, you should be mad,” Linda Siegle, a lobbyist for Equality New Mexico, told a dejected crowd outside the Capitol. “The people in this building said you are not equal, you are not worthy, you do not deserve the same rights as most of them have.”

[...]

Its sponsor, Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, described it as a “safety net” for those who don’t qualify for, or choose, marriage.

The bill is “not a marriage bill,” he insisted. New Mexico doesn’t even recognize common-law marriage, said McSorley, a lawyer who chairs the Judiciary Committee. A valid license is required to be considered married.

In New Mexico, “You’re either married or you’re not married. This bill changes nothing,” he said

Read the entire article over at The Dallas Voice

Lawmakers announced a move they hope leads to another milestone for them: the expansion of the state’s domestic partnership law to offer same-sex couples all the rights and benefits given to heterosexual married couples.

The 110-page bill makes changes to all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are addressed. The bill would add same-sex domestic partners to state statutes ranging from labor and employment to pensions and other public employee benefits.

For more – go here.

The domestic partnership bills are Senate Bill 5688 and House Bill 1727.

Protecting kids is also at the top of Basic Rights Oregon’s priorities for 2009. The organization is launching a 2009 Safe Schools campaign to update 2001’s anti-bullying statute. The update was modeled after New York’s and California’s policy, requiring all Oregon schools to adopt the statute and adding mandatory data collection.

Supportive legislators have not yet been named.

Other items on BRO’s 2009 agenda include a “domestic partnership stability bill,” a clarification of the current law; and the possible formation of a transgender policy work group with BRO’s support to examine health care protections needed for transgender people.

Marriage equality is another priority for the orgnization, which hopes to repeal Oregon’s same-sex marriage ban, Measure 36, at the ballot in 2012. BRO also continues the legal challenge to Measure 36 by asking the Oregon Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling against Martinez V. State of Oregon.

Thank you Jaymee at Just Out!

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.

Read the rest here.