A woman in a doctor’s office was scheduling her next visit for Aug. 21
“Election Day,” I said from across the room.
“What?” she asked. “So soon?”
Many people didn’t realize that our primary election is now a month earlier than the September date it’s had for generations. They know it now that their mail ballots and voters’ pamphlets have come.
Domestic partnership law needs strengthening
Washington’s new domestic-partnership law went into effect a two-and-a-half weeks ago. It gives homosexual couples and heterosexuals over age 62 the right to register as domestic partners and have a list of rights, such as hospital-visitation, health-care consent, inheritance and estate administration.
Still, some rights aren’t included. For example, husbands and wives don’t have to testify against each other. Domestic partners should have the same privilege. Let’s amend the law to say that same-sex domestic partners have all the same rights and responsibilities as married couples.
That would give same-sex domestic partners a status under the law equal to that of married couples without the word “marriage.”
Insurance referendum tactics tried but not true
If insurance interests use the same advertising tactics in the general election that they used to get Referendum 67 on the ballot, they’ll fail.
The ads aimed at getting the referendum on the ballot featured trial lawyers talking about suing under the legislation that the referendum would repeal.
It reminds me of the ads for an unsuccessful campaign two years ago for an initiative to limit medical malpractice suits.
The anti-lawyer theme didn’t work then. It won’t work now.
35 years of unintended Title IX consequences
The law that gave women and girls equality in school sports, Title IX of the federal education act, turned 35 in July.
The law has increased women’s participation in school sports by seven or eight times.
It’s hard to believe that when Congress passed the law women on college teams had to make sandwiches before they got into cars to drive to games, while their male counterparts were looking forward to airline meals.
Now, women have equal travel, coaching and scholarships, but colleges that play top-level football have achieved equality the wrong way. They’ve cut back men’s teams in swimming, wrestling and gymnastics. Ending gymnastics wasn’t the intent of Title IX.
The size of football teams has forced many colleges to reach equality by having two or three more women’s teams than men’s. Maybe some should drop football instead of tennis, or maybe they could go back to the one-platoon football of the 1950s that allowed smaller teams.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.
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