Voters in Washington have previously supported a "all but marriage" measure of civil unions meant to mimic an actual marriage contract. State Sen. Ed Murray said he and colleagues are "going to push it" and that they think 2012 will be the year that marriage equality happens.
Opposing this deregulation of marriage are Republicans who insist that state controls are necessary to "preserve marriage in its traditional form." Apparently they are ignorant of history otherwise they would not speak of a "traditional form" of marriage at all. It was once deemed that marriage meant women should not vote because their husbands represented them. Before marriage their fathers did that job. Women could not own their own property at times, all property had to be owned by the husband. Even the income of women from employment was deemed to belong to their husband. This was "traditional" marriage. While Sen. Dan Swecker, a big government Republican, wants to preserve "traditional" marriage he only wants to preserve some aspects of traditional marriage.
Marriage to Republicans is like the Bible to fundamentalist—they insist on the right to pick and choose which parts to like and ignore the rest.
Currently the Democrats have a majority in the state Senate and House, but conservative Democrats have previously voted with Republicans to keep government restrictions on marriage contracts in place. Some Republicans will have to jump ship and support deregulation and smaller government in order for the marriage measure to become law. Swecker says there is a 50/50 chance of the deregulation becoming law.
Conservatives pledge to have the rights of the gay minority put up to a public vote where the majority gets to decide whether a minority has the same rights as themselves. Jefferson said that the "most sacred" duty of government is "to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." He wrote that the best principles of the country was to "secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights." He said no man "has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another." The concept of equality of rights, in Republican views means, everyone has the same right to vote the rights of minorities and deny them equality of rights because they are not the majority. It is the very sort of democracy that the Founders warned us to avoid in favor of a Republic.
