This week, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire signed her state’s same-sex marriage law, making it the seventh in the nation with marriage equality.
And in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie renewed his pledge to veto a marriage bill: The state Senate approved the measure earlier this week and the Assembly was set to vote Thursday.
Commenting on the Senate vote Tuesday, Christie called it “good … theater.” Democrats, who control both houses in New Jersey, are several seats shy of the two-thirds majority they need to overturn a veto.
“They won’t get enough votes to override it, they know that and I know that, and yesterday was a good bunch of theater, but that was all it was,” Christie said. “They know it’s not going to happen.”
In Maryland, two House committees jointly passed a marriage-equality bill Tuesday, which advocates expect to narrowly pass. Last session, a similar bill cleared the Senate in a close vote.
Christie’s characterization of the votes on marriage equality as “theater” diminishes the lives and relationships of the state’s LGBT citizens. Sure, civil unions are better than nothing. But they aren’t marriage. Not in name, not in intent and not in perception. When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the state had to provide equitable rights, it did not qualify its ruling to say, “ … in most cases.”
Clearly, Christie isn’t worried about offending anyone with his bombastic, combative personality and dismissive, uninformed comments. (See his recent comment that African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement would have preferred a referendum on their rights, when talking about putting marriage equality up for referendum.)
Gregoire, for her part, has acknowledged she had a change of heart about same-sex marriage, going so far as to write a letter in January to fellow Catholic Christie on how she came to back it.
Gay-marriage opponents in Washington have pledged to get the issue on the November ballot as a referendum.
It’s interesting to note that every state that has marriage equality has had openly gay state representatives. (This might explain why Pennsylvania lags behind other states in LGBT equality issues.)
In a side note, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was in Washington on Monday, presumably not for the marriage-equality bill signing.
Santorum met with state lawmakers and religious leaders after the bill was signed, urging marriage opponents to “continue the fight,” then held a campaign event in the traditionally Democratic state.