Please vote “yes”
I think I’m on a roll. This is my second political post in a row. I made it through all of 2008–a huge political year!–without talking politics on this blog, but this summer there are too many crucial issues being debated for me to stay silent. The first was the White House being inconsistent and unhelpful regarding DOMA and DADT. And the second is Referendum 71.
I’ve found out that it’s hard to get information about Referendum 71 and how it came into being. This webpage gives you a lot of different takes on the complicated story. But the basics are these:
1) the Washington State Legislature passed–and Governor Chris Gregoire signed–a measure expanding the rights of registered domestic partners in the state of Washington;
2) registered domestic partners are not only same-sex couples, but also heterosexual persons who live as domestic partners, are not romantically involved, and do not want to marry because they would lose government-funded health benefits if their marital status changed;
3) a group of citizens tried to collect enough signatures to put this law–written and signed, as noted above, by the people’s duly-elected representatives–up to a public vote; and finally,
4) a yes vote will preserve the original law, and by extension the rights of domestic partners across the state. (And by “rights” I mean decidedly non-radical things like the right to visit your partner in the hospital, or the right to decide who gets your stuff when you die.)
Oh, and I should mention that there are legal actions being taken that call into question the validity of many of the signatures that got Ref-71 onto the ballot in the first place.
I have at least two problems with Ref-71, and I suppose at this point in the post you know what they are! The first is the basic question of justice and fairness. My partner and I are registered as domestic partners, and while certain people might like you to think that this means we’re dangerous radicals, all it really means is that we enjoy all of the rights of married heterosexual couples, with the exception of saying that we are “married.” As citizens of this state, and of this nation, we simply enjoy the right to choose our kin, the right to manage any health crisis we might suffer, the right to decide what happens after one of us dies.
And now, because of fear, misunderstanding and ignorance, those rights are in jeopardy.
But that’s not all. My second concern has to do with the fact that a certain number of citizens are trying to second-guess a law written, passed, and signed by the elected representatives who were sent to Olympia by all of us. It’s not the second-guessing itself that I object to: please understand, I think that dissent is a crucial part of a healthy democracy. It’s that they’re trying to do an end run around the system. They know they don’t have the votes in the Legislature, and they know Gov. Gregoire doesn’t share their views. Unseating all the public servants who oppose them would take a long time, and be very hard to do. So they’re trying to bring down this law using the undemocratic method of a referendum.
It’s clever, really. A referendum seems to be democratic. What could be more democratic than having every citizen participate in a state-wide show of hands? But it’s not. For more on why it’s undemocratic, go here. But I’ll say briefly (because this post is pretty long already, and maybe starting to sound like a rant!) that we don’t live in a pure democracy. We live in a democratic republic. And only in a democratic republic do all the voices have a forum in which to be heard. Minority rights aren’t protected in a pure democracy. In a pure democracy, whoever motivates 51% of the crowd wins. That’s why our forbears took such trouble to construct a form of government that functions more fairly, and with more stability.
So I encourage you to vote “yes” on Referendum 71. The next rights to be questioned and denied could be your own.
(And thanks for listening to my rant!)
