OLYMPIA, January 5, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire announced at a press conference yesterday that she plans to introduce a bill in the state legislature to legalize homosexual “marriage.”
Gregoire signed a law creating same-sex domestic partnerships in the state in 2007, and now hopes Washington will become the seventh state to sanction gay “marriage.”
In a twenty minute speech, the governor compared laws against same-sex “marriage” to discrimination against racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, immigrants, and religious sects, and called on Washingtonians to “support equality again in our great state.”
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The Seattle Times reports that the governor, who is a Catholic, has said that her position “has been a battle for me with my religion.”
“I came to realize the religions can decide what they want to do, but it is not OK for the state to discriminate,” she said, according to the news service.
Her proposal has received support from many of the state’s Democratic legislators, who hold a majority in both the House and Senate.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a supporter of the proposal, told the Weekly Herald that there was a need for more than just a domestic partnership law in Washington State because of “the fairly deep meaning of the word ‘marriage’ in people’s psyche.”
Other outspoken proponents for gay “marriage” in the Washington legislature include openly gay lawmakers Sen. Ed Murray and Rep. Marko Liias.
According to realclearpolitics.com, Murray and Pedersen have said that the Governor’s proposal would be decided by the legislature, and that the people of Washington would not have a chance to vote via referendum.
Murray told the news service that they were currently “a few votes short” in the Senate, due to a few conservative Democrats who were opposing the measure.