It’s been apparent from the outset that Referendum 74 will qualify for the November ballot. After all, very few referendum campaigns don’t collect the required 120,577 voter signatures since it is such a low percentage of the total registered voters in the state. Once on the ballot, R-74 will ask voters to approve or reject [...]

Since late March, one of National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay campaigns, Preserve Marriage Washington, has been gathering signatures in hopes of forcing Referendum 74 onto the November ballot. If the measure qualifies for the ballot, voters will be asked to APPROVE or reject Washington’s civil marriage equality law. According to the daily tally reported on [...]

Gary Randall is being sidelined by Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, and is trying to look relevant. Why else would he, the president of Faith and Freedom Network, offer this information to the public unless he’s worried that he won’t get credit for his role in the effort to force two anti-gay marriage measures [...]

Washington voters are showing little interest in repealing the state’s new marriage equality law, judging by the marginal number of Referendum 74-qualifying signatures gathered so far by marriage equality opponents. With less than 5 weeks remaining before the June 6 deadline, only a third of the estimated 150,000 raw signatures have been collected that are [...]

Washington voters may not be aware, but to Preserve Marriage Washington they are a “mission field” being given a last chance “to repent, to turn this back to a God-honoring state” by putting Referendum 74 on the ballot. In fact Washington isn’t just any mission field, but “the darkest mission field, the most black place [...]

Among opponents of civil marriage equality, anti-gay animus always trumps concern for the welfare of children. The latest example is provided by Family Policy Institute of Washington. On the one hand, FPIW is promoting the Heritage Foundation article “Marriage Protects Women and Children from Violence”, calling it “A good article on one often overlooked benefit [...]

Poor Ken Hutcherson. The NOM-endorsed gasbag is out of fuel and starting to recycle the fumes. Frustrated that the majority of Washington state’s Christians are actually fair-minded people with aren’t obsessed with persecuting gays, Hutcherson is casting about for a way to prime the lazy bigot pump. And he thinks a call to “take back [...]

National Organization for Marriage’s recently-released strategy documents recommend that opponents of marriage equality “drive a wedge between gays and blacks” and “provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots”. The documents also show that NOM earmarked funds for an “outreach coordinator to identify children of gay parents willing [...]

Here is a textbook example of what projecting one’s own opinions onto a religious figure looks like. The writer of the following letter to the editor of the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review objects to the City Council of Spokane, Washington consideration of a resolution in support of Washington’s marriage equality law. The new law is under [...]

In a heartening move Father Michael Ryan, St. James Cathedral‘s senior pastor, e-mailed his congregation this week to inform them that the cathedral was not participating in the signature gathering effort to force Referendum 74 on the November ballot. Referendum 74, a project of National Organization for Marriage, would repeal Washington’s new civil marriage equality [...]