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 …continue.

Ted Kennedy died tonight, at the age of 77, after a year-long battle with brain cancer. He was, according to Wikipedia, the third-longest-serving senator of all time, elected in 1962, as soon as he became eligible at 30.

He was a great liberal and he ac­com­plished much. He will be remembered for much more than being the youngest brother of Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

Senator Patty Murray visited us at Cozi this morning. She was there to hear from small business people about healthcare reform and she met with half-a-dozen local small business owners, including our CEO, Robbie Cape. I sat in on the meeting as an observer to take photos.

We heard a number of stories.

Jason runs a record store. When they decided to insure all of their employees, it meant that everyone had to take a pay cut. One guy didn't want to take part, but Jason convinced him. Weeks later, that guy broke his arm and ended up in the emergency room. Not long after, the same guy had another accident. Later …continue.

Those town halls are getting uglier.

A dozen gun-toting paranoid guys walking around at Obama's town hall in Arizona yesterday, some of them with ties to the violent Viper Militia.

In the video above, Barney Frank takes a question from some woman who's comparing Obama to a Nazi and tells her she's talking “vile, con­temptible nonsense”.

I hope it's not going to escalate into outright violence.

We held our rally for healthcare and the public option at lunchtime, outside the Jackson Federal Building where both Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have their Seattle offices.

Turnout was good: about 100 people, I'd say. We had about half-a-dozen speakers over 45 minutes. A cameraman from King–5 covered it, but I can't find anything on their website. A handful of people went upstairs to the senators' offices and delivered 291 pages of petitions.

One concrete suggestion that I came away with is to write a hand­writ­ten letter to the senators advocating for healthcare reform. Hand­writ­ten letters carry more weight than printed letters or calls and much more weight than emails.

Do it soon. If …continue.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us visited our senators' offices to talk to their staffers about the Public Option in health care. We're organizing a downtown Seattle rally at the Federal Building on Thursday at 12:15pm, where both Senators Cantwell and Murray have their offices. It's one of the large number of rallies that MoveOn.org is organizing at senators' offices all around the country on Thursday.

Will sent out this email to a number of people earlier this evening and I'm going to reprint it here.

"I think it's fair to say that July is going to be the most historic and con­se­quen­tial period for health …continue.

Today, I did something that I've never done before. I visited my US Senators' offices, with a handful of others, to help stiffen their spines on healthcare reform.

It started by accident last night when Mira mentioned on Facebook that she was going to visit Rep. Jim McDermott, Sen. Maria Cantwell, and Sen. Patty Murray's Seattle offices today to talk to them about the “public option”.

McDermott and Murray were already supporters of the public health insurance option. Cantwell's position was murkier and she came out in favor of some kind of lame “co-op” compromise earlier this week. Mira and her friends had no difficulty in setting up meetings with …continue.

Candidate Obama talked a great line in gay rights, selling himself as a “fierce advocate”. He'd get rid of the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and more.

President Obama has been a big dis­ap­point­ment on gay rights. He hasn't done anything about DADT, he hasn't spoken out about gay marriage, he hasn't made any gay ap­point­ments. John Aravosis has a good roundup at Salon.

But now a shitstorm has blown up. On Friday, the Department of Justice filed a brief in defense of DOMA. First of all, the DoJ is not actually required to defend all laws. More im­por­tant­ly, the brief was gra­tu­itous­ly offensive, invoking incest and pedophilia.

People are outraged. A …continue.

The California Supreme Court handed down their decision about Propo­si­tion 8 today: they're letting it stand. No new gay marriages, though the 18,000 same-sex marriages that were enacted last year remain valid.

It's a setback to be sure. The silver lining is that the gay community has been fired up since Propo­si­tion 8 passed in November.

There's a small but real danger that Referendum 71 will make it on to the ballot here in Washington state. It would roll back the everything-but-marriage domestic part­ner­ship law that passed recently.

A month ago, Vermont and Iowa passed gay marriage laws. Today, Maine and New Hampshire did the same. The Maine Governor has already signed it into law. The NH leg­is­la­ture passed a law, but it's possible their governor will veto it.

It's as if there were a pro-gay marriage backlash after the anti-gay marriage Propo­si­tion 8 passed in California last year. Courts and leg­is­la­tures are realizing the fun­da­men­tal unfairness of denying the benefits of marriage to all committed couples. The sky didn't fall when Mass­a­chu­setts legalized gay marriage five years ago.

There's no immediate prospect of a gay marriage law being enacted in Washington State. Last month, the state leg­is­la­ture …continue.