Seattle to recognize marriages of gay city workers

[chascarrillo]

Sunday, March 7, 2004

Seattle to recognize marriages of gay city workers

By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Mayor Greg Nickels announced Sunday that the city would begin recognizing the marriages of gay employees who get their unions licensed elsewhere.

"Beginning tomorrow, we're going to give everyone who works for the City who has been married equal rights regardless of whether they are straight or gay," the mayor said in a statement provided to The Associated Press.

Nickels supports gay marriage, but because counties -- not cities -- issue marriage licenses in Washington state, he has said he lacks the legal authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses like mayors in San Francisco and New Paltz, N.Y., have done.

King County Executive Ron Sims, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, favors gay marriage but has said his hands are tied by a state law and would not follow the lead of Multnomah County in Oregon, which began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples last week.

Washington state lawmakers passed a "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1998, making Washington one of 38 states defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Gov. Gary Locke vetoed the law, but lawmakers overrode the veto.

An executive order Nickels was scheduled to sign on Monday will require all city departments to recognize city employees in same-sex marriages just as they currently recognize marriages between men and women. It also will give same-sex spouses all the benefits of heterosexual married couples, including health insurance.

(more)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/163654_gaymarriage07ww.html

[flamingyouth]

1. That's great news!

Seattle has had its hands tied by the stupid state law banning gay marriages, but I wish Nickels and Ron Sims would defy the law and marry people anyway.

[Voltaire99]

2. Bravo

I never expected it, but the gay marriage movement has brought a ray of hope to the cheerless frontiers of US civil liberties and civil rights: here, after the decades of reversals, is reason to believe that America can leave the cave of its primitivism and enter modernity, that the promise of our republic can be fulfilled.

I'm not saying the thunderclap of our medieval right wing won't drown the gains of this epoch in a tide of violent ignorance. But for now, gays and lesbians are making the nation better for all of us - and setting an example of joy and love for the narrow-minded and bigoted.

May you be able to marry to your queer hearts' content! :-)