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Governor OKs domestic partner rights law

Associated Press - 12:58 PM PDT on Monday, May 18, 2009
OLYMPIA, Wash. - Gov. Chris Gregoire has approved a measure that gives same-sex domestic partners all the rights and benefits that Washington state offers married couples.

Gregoire signed the bill Monday in Seattle. It will take effect at the end of July, unless opponents collect enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot.

The "everything but marriage" law expands on previous domestic partnership laws, giving additional spousal rights and benefits to domestic partners, including same-sex couples and unmarried senior heterosexual couples, in various areas of state law.

Among them:

  • The right to use sick leave to care for a domestic partner.
  • The right to wages and benefits when a domestic partner is injured, and to unpaid wages upon the death of a domestic partner.
  • The right to unemployment and disability insurance benefits.
  • The right to workers' compensation coverage.
  • Insurance rights, including rights under group policies, policy rights after the death of a domestic partner, conversion rights and continuing coverage rights.
  • Rights related to adoption, child custody and child support.
  • Business succession rights.

More than 5,300 domestic partnership registrations had been filed in Washington since July 2007.

The benefits range from labor and employment rights to pensions and other public employee benefits.

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Mission

The mission of the new PAC is to organize the effort to gather the 120,577 required signatures for Referendum 71 by July 25, 2009 to bring the controversial Senate Bill 5688 before the voters of Washington State in November. SB 5688 is a 110 page document which includes the phrase "marriage shall apply equally to state registered domestic partnerships" 180 times.

 

SB 5688 was packaged and presented to the legislature as a Domestic Partnerships expansion of benefits. In truth, it will demolish the state's historical understanding and definition of marriage as that of uniting a man and a woman for life as Washington State will immediately become subject to litigation by same-sex partners demanding that the courts overturn the Defense of Marriage Act and impose "same-sex marriage" (as happened recently in California prior to Proposition 8).