I'm fairly confident that Referendum 71 will be approved. It was leading by 51% this morning and by 51.8% this evening, and leading 2:1 in King County, the most populous, most liberal county in Washington state.

Ballots merely have to be postmarked by Election Day to be valid, and hundreds of thousands of them have not yet been received by the vote counters.

I attended the Election Night party last night and helped the tech team with some behind-the-scenes arrangements. In the photo, Joe Mirabella (lead blogger) and Josh Cohen (tech lead) are being thanked by Anne Levinson (campaign chair) and Josh Friedes (campaign manager).

The mood was cautiously optimistic about Referendum 71 passing, tempered by some disappointment that Maine's gay marriage law was sure to be repealed.

Tim Eyman's Measure 1033 also went down to defeat, which also made me happy. Anything sponsored by Eyman is ipso facto bad.

Today is National Coming Out Day, a day to promote awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. For anyone who doesn't already know: I'm bisexual.

I'm married to Emma. That leads people to tacitly assume that I'm straight. Too often, I do little or nothing to challenge that assumption, either from straight people or gay people.

I came out in grad school, a couple of years after leaving Ireland. It was difficult at first, but ultimately rewarding.

I'm married to a woman, but I could have ended up with a male partner, a partner whom I could not legally marry in Washington state. Emma and I married because anything else is second class. This is the root of my passionate involvement with the Approve 71 campaign. It's also why I've been a leader of BiNet Seattle for more than a decade.

The National Equality March takes place in Washington DC this weekend. Forty years after the Stonewall riots, LGBT people are rallying for equal protection in all matters. This is also the Seattle LGBT Equality Weekend.

There's a march this afternoon, starting from Volunteer Park at 2pm. I'll be there. Will you?

PS Let me refer you to Tim Wilson's Coming Out as Good Citizenship.

I'm breaking radio silence to explain the uncharacteristic drought of blog posts. In my last post, I mentioned that I had created a Twibbon overlay for Approve71.org, allowing you to overlay Approve71's badge over your Twitter icon.

The next day I went over to Approve71's headquarters and introduced myself to the tech team, Josh, Joe, and Adam. One thing led to another, and I spent that weekend writing my first-ever PHP code, which allowed you to upload a photo to Approve71's website, stamp a banner on it, and then save it so that you could subsequently upload it to Facebook for your profile picture.

It's been a big success, used a couple of thousand times.

Since then, I spent a lot of time working on a second version, which lets you crop the photo (using imgAreaSelect) and choose from a set of overlay banners. Some of the banners are for the NO on 1 campaign in Maine, where they're fighting an attempted repeal of their same-sex marriage law.

The second site went live earlier this week. Try it out: Create a Profile Picture.

Twibbon is a service that allows you to overlay a cause's badge over your Twitter icon.

I created a Twibbon overlay for Approve71.org.

The results look great on Twitter and Twibbon.

Unfortunately, if I save the image and upload it to Facebook as my profile picture, it doesn't look so good. Even if I use the FB UI to pan around in the image, the cropping ruins it.

I just mailed stormideas, the people behind Twibbon, asking if they could do something similar for Facebook profiles.

I attended the Approve Referendum 71 community organization meeting this evening and came away with several good ideas.

Emma and I are going to organize a fundraiser in late September or early October. Stay tuned.

I'm getting Freely Speaking Toastmasters and BiNet Seattle to officially endorse the Approve Referendum 71 campaign.

Large businesses like Microsoft and Boeing endorsed the campaign yesterday. I'm told a number of small businesses have too. I'm going to ask our CEO to endorse the campaign. Robbie was willing to host Patty Murray at Cozi and to appear in her press releases, so why not.

I offered my technical services to the campaign, though I'm willing to do grunt work too.

I spent 90 minutes phonebanking for Approve 71 after work today. I called voters who had already been identified as leaning progressive and asked them to vote APPROVE on Referendum 71 in November.

Under the recent Domestic Partnership law (SB 5688 aka the “everything but marriage bill”), registered domestic partners (same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples with at least one partner over age 62), and married couples, are now treated equally under the law in all parts of Washington state.

The Religious Right objected and put together an initiative which scraped together just enough signatures to be on the ballot. They'll be voting to REJECT the bill, which would overturn domestic partnerships in this state.

Civil rights should not be subject to a vote. It's important not to have a repeat of last year's Proposition 8 debacle in California. It's important to me personally and I'm putting time and money into the campaign.

If you want to join the effort, sign up at Approve71.org, and become a fan on Facebook.

Phonebanking will take place regularly in Seattle and other locations. In Seattle, it's happening at the Equal Rights Washington offices at 7th & Columbia, beside the freeway offramp. If you have a laptop with Skype, bring it along.

See you there.

Approve Referendum 71. If you're eligible to vote in Washington state in November, remember this: Approve Referendum 71.

On May 18, 2009, Governor Gregoire signed Senate Bill 5688, aka the “everything but marriage bill” or the Domestic Partnership Law, a law ensuring that all Washington families are treated the same, with the same protections, the same rights, and the same obligations as their neighbors. Under this law, registered domestic partners (same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples with at least one partner over age 62), and married couples, are treated equally under the law in all parts of the state.

Key rights and obligations in the law include:

• Death benefits for the partners of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
• Pension benefits for the partners of teachers and other public employees.
• Victims' rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances.
• The right to use sick leave to care for a seriously ill partner.
• The right to workers' compensation benefits if a partner is killed in the course of employment.
• The right to receive unemployment benefits if an employee must leave a job to care for a seriously ill partner.
• The right to adopt a partner's child without paying for a home study.

The areas covered by the law include labor and employment law; pensions, survivor and other public employee benefits; family law; insurance rights; higher education; banks, financial institutions and loan agencies; creditors' rights and business licenses.

Opponents of the domestic partnership law are seeking to repeal it. Referendum 71 would ask voters whether the law should be approved or rejected. A vote to "APPROVE" keeps the law so that all families will have these protections in all parts of the state.

The Religious Right promptly put together a ballot initiative to strike down the new DP law. They gathered signatures, but submitted barely enough to qualify. For the last few weeks, the office of the Secretary of State has been verifying the initiative signatures. It was too close to tell one way or another whether they would pass. Today, they limped past the threshold of 120,577 verified signatures with a margin of about 900.

Final certification is expected on Wednesday by the Secretary of State. Barring a successful challenge by Washington Families Standing Together, Referendum 71 will be on the ballot in November.

Putting rights up for a vote is indecent. Stripping citizens of hard-won rights is fundamentally unfair.

Please spread the word. Tell everyone to Approve Referendum 71.

The wording is confusing but remember that you're voting to affirm the recently passed law.

I expect this to be a difficult battle. The Religious Right is well-funded and well-organized, they're already fired up and angry about everything Obama does, and liberal turnout tends to be down in odd-numbered years.

If you can spare some money, please make a donation to WAFST.

By the way, don't assume that you're correctly registered to vote. Please check that you're currently registered. Check that your friends are registered too.

Approve Referendum 71, for fairness.