Arlington resident propels Referendum 71 fight

Published 11:59 pm Monday, September 7, 2009

In the final days of gathering signatures for Referendum 71, Arlington’s Larry Stickney stacked so many petitions on his family room table it cracked under the weight.

There’s been no time for repairs as Stickney is now piling the table with armaments of a political campaign likely to cause a deep fissure in Washington’s cultural bedrock.

Barring the outcome of a pending lawsuit, ballots go out in six weeks, and voters will show just how much they’re willing to support gay and lesbian couples.

“This thing will be a slugfest,” said Stickney, a managing strategist for referendum sponsors Protect Marriage Washington. “I’d like to see a good raucous debate and get it out in front of the people.”

In a Seattle office, weeks before the measure qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, those at Washington Families Standing Together started drawing up plans, assembling forces and launching a counteroffensive.

Even as the group’s lawyers today will urge a judge to block the vote, its campaign is under way with workers calling voters daily.

“This cannot be leisurely,” said spokesman Joshua Friedes. “Only six weeks means we need to be in a very intense conversation.”

Stickney obtained the first signature for Referendum 71 late in the afternoon on June 5. Fifty days later, he and a cadre of volunteers, including state Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, showed up at the Capitol to turn in 137,881 voters’ signatures.

Last week, Secretary of State Sam Reed determined they had filed enough valid ones — with 1,430 to spare — to secure a spot in the Nov. 3 general election.

Referendum 71 targets the state’s latest upgrade in its 3-year-old domestic partnership law.

That 2007 legislation enabled same-sex couples over the age of 18 and heterosexual couples with one partner aged 62 or older to register their relationship with the state as a domestic partnership.

It provided them a few benefits granted to married couples under state law such as the right to visit a partner in a hospital, administer their deceased partner’s estate and inherit property from a partner.

A 2008 law added more rights and this year the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. Chris Gregoire expanded it further with Senate Bill 5688, the specific bill targeted by the referendum.

The legislation, which will fill 37 pages in the voters’ pamphlet, makes registered same-sex domestic partners indistinguishable under state law from married couples with the exception that they cannot marry, hence its nickname, “everything but marriage.”

Supporters insist it does not weaken state law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Protect Marriage Washington’s strategy centers on convincing voters there’s no “but” in the practical effect of the law.

“We’ll make the case that this is indeed marriage,” Stickney said.

If it takes effect, he said it is inevitable lawmakers or lawyers will be out to legalize gay marriage as early as 2010. Stopping expansion now is the only way to prevent that from happening, he said.

Friedes said their campaign’s greatest challenge will be countering that claim.

“Sadly, it is not about marriage equality,” he said. “It is about a basket of protections for families.

“The basic message we’re trying to convey is the domestic partnership law provides essential protections to gay and lesbian couples who are denied the freedom to marry,” he said.

At this stage, both campaigns envision aggressively reaching voters through mailers, commercials and phone calls. Right now both are cash-poor and people-rich and rely on inexpensive means of reaching voters like telephone calls and the Internet.

As of last week, Washington Families Standing Together, a coalition of 150 groups, had taken in nearly $100,000 in cash and in-kind contributions and used up most of it. Protect Marriage Washington reported having spent most of the $36,000 it has received in contributions, according to filings with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Each side is looking for more and wondering if any of the big contributors in last year’s multimillion-dollar battle on gay marriage in California will get involved in Washington.

“We know they’re out there,” Stickney said. “I don’t have a pipeline to those guys. We think the money may arrive but we’re planning to go ahead with a major campaign without them.”

Stickney said it’s “going to be very visual early on” and involve mailers, phone calls and a heavy use of online communications. He claimed an ability to reach up to 100,000 people through an e-mail chain wending from his computer through those of religious and conservative groups tied to Protect Marriage Washington.

Among them is Faith and Freedom Network led by Gary Randall, who, like Stickney, is a voice of the campaign. He’s actually the stronger nexus to one of the campaign’s core sources of people power — churches.

“This is not a time for Christians and people of faith to be silent. It is a time to speak,” Randall wrote in a recent e-mail.

As many as 75,000 of the signatures were gathered at churches like Westgate Chapel in Edmonds, which is also home to Sound the Alarm, a network of 1,200 pastors. The group won’t campaign as an organization, but its members will as individuals.

“I will encourage people to do whatever it takes to preserve the biblical definition of marriage as between a man and a woman,” said its executive director, Pastor Mark Nordtvedt.

Washington Families Standing Together contemplates an aggressive campaign of television ads and mailers if enough money is raised.

The group has a phone bank in Seattle where coalition volunteers are calling voters daily.

Expect the same in Snohomish County, where Rep. Marko Liias, D-Mukilteo, said personal contact, not 60-second commercials, will spell the difference.

“It’s not about shipping people from Seattle to talk to our people in Snohomish County to tell us it’s good for us,” he said. “We need people in Snohomish County going door-to-door talking to their neighbors and explaining to them this is not marriage, this is about granting basic rights to the state’s 6,000 domestic partnerships.”

One of those is Thomas Blossom of Everett who is 71, straight, and in his 50th year of marriage. He also leads the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

“I sincerely believe the value of my marriage is diminished because I belong to an institution that discriminates,” he said.

Confidence is high on both sides.

Stickney calculates victory can be attained if voters turn out in large enough numbers to offset ballots cast in liberal-leaning Seattle.

Liias said voters will rally behind assuring strong domestic partnerships.

“This is a unique opportunity to show how tolerant Washington is,” Liias said. “I’m not afraid that it is going to fail. The only reason it’s going to fail is if we don’t work hard enough.”

Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.