Washington justices to rule on gay marriage

OLYMPIA – It’s been nearly a year since chanting demonstrators faced off against one another on the Supreme Court steps, separated by state troopers, a few feet of open space, and a vast philosophical gulf over what marriage should be.

The guy in the fake Army uniform carrying the huge crucifix is long gone, as are the Spokane college students in their rainbow-colored T-shirts.

But that day remains very much alive for Spokane’s Marge Ballack, who’s been watching the court’s Web site for months, hoping for state permission so she and her longtime partner, Diane Lantz, can get married.

“It’s been a long wait,” Ballack said. “But we’ve waited a quarter of a century.”

They won’t have to wait much longer for an answer. Last week, Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said the court hopes to issue its ruling on same-sex marriage before the state Legislature goes home March 9.

“The court recognizes the importance of this issue,” he said.

The decision looms over the capital at a time when gays and lesbians seem on the verge of winning another long-running struggle in Olympia. For 32 years, liberal lawmakers have been trying to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and financial transactions. (It’s already illegal on the basis of sex, race, national origin, religion and several other factors.)

The bill failed by just one vote in the Senate last year, but last week, Republican Sen. Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, said he’s changed his mind. He’ll now vote for it. Democrats are hoping other Senate Republicans will also cross the aisle to back it, as they have in the House.

“If I was a betting man, I’d bet that they’d get more” votes, said Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Otis Orchards.

The first of what are likely to be two hearings on the anti-discrimination bill will begin at 10 a.m. today. It will be carried live by TVW, the state’s public-affairs cable television network. The network also offers free streaming audio on its Web site, at www.tvw.org.

Same-sex marriage foes argue that the anti-discrimination law, HB 2661, would set the stage for same-sex marriage, even if the Supreme Court upholds the current ban. Democrats insist that the anti-discrimination law has nothing to do with marriage.

“It relates to housing, employment, financial practices,” said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane. “Those are quite different than the marriage statutes. They’re just separate.”

McCaslin said he plans to vote against the bill. He’s not convinced that such discrimination exists.

“I don’t know of any examples,” he said.

Ballack says she has some, not necessarily limited to the topics covered by the bill. She said she was washing her car on the street in Spokane when three men cursed her and spit on her. In the 1970s, she said, her auto insurance policy was canceled when she called to ask about adding her partner to the policy. The company, she said, told her that as a lesbian, she was considered a “moral risk.”

House Speaker Frank Chopp said last week that the House, which has repeatedly approved such bills with votes from both parties, will pass HB 2661 within two weeks. Then it goes to the Senate. Proponents plan to bring thousands of people to the Capitol for an “Equality Day” demonstration Jan. 23. Also publicly backing the bill are half a dozen of Washington’s big-name corporations: Boeing, Hewlett Packard, Corbis, Microsoft, Nike, RealNetworks Inc. and Vulcan Inc.

Brown said she’s optimistic that the bill will pass this year.

“It’s beginning to look pretty likely,” she said.

As for the court ruling on same-sex marriage, it seems unlikely that lawmakers on either side will be able to muster the votes to change whatever the high court decides.

If the justices say the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional, Brown says, liberals probably couldn’t get enough support to do away with the law, which was passed in 1998 and ruled unconstitutional by two lower courts.

On the other hand, if the court rules the ban unconstitutional, Republicans would probably have a hard time mustering the two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate required to launch a statewide vote to amend the Washington Constitution.

“Opening up the Constitution is a really high bar,” Brown said.