Your Vote 2012: Will Washington voters be the first to support same-sex marriage?

No state has approved same-sex marriage by a public vote. Will Washington be the first?

Social change doesn’t usually happen very quickly, but it was only 10 months ago when Governor Chris Gregoire announced she had a change of heart regarding gay marriage.

“Today I’m announcing my support for a law that gives our same sex couples in our state the right to receive a marriage license in Washington – the same right given to our heterosexual couples,” Gregoire said on January 4, 2012. “It is time. It’s the right thing to do, and I will introduce the bill to make it happen.”

On February 13, 2012, Gregoire signed the state’s same-sex marriage law saying “this is a very proud moment.”

“It’s a day that historians will mark as a milestone for equal rights in this state,” she said. “I’m proud that our same sex couples will no longer be treated as separate but equal. They will be equal in the great State of Washington.”

The law did not take effect. Thousands of people added their names to petitions asking to repeal gay marriage with a public vote. Referendum 74 asks people to either approve or reject the state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage.

Specifically you’ll accept or reject this: Allowing same-sex couples to marry, and preserving the right of clergy or religious organizations to refuse to perform, recognize, or accommodate any marriage ceremony.

Joseph Backholm is an attorney and father of four. He’s leading the campaign against same-sex marriage.

“The definition of marriage matters,” Backholm says.

State Representative Jamie Pedersen is also an attorney and father of four. The openly-gay Seattle lawmaker was by the governor’s side when she signed the marriage equality law.

“The definition of marriage is staying exactly the same,” says Pedersen.

They don’t agree on anything.

Both sides of the same-sex marriage debate claim they know what is in the best interest of children.

Backholm fundamentally disagrees that same-sex couples can be great parents, and he says studies back him up.

“We haven’t been studying same-sex parenting long enough to have longitudinal data on this, but there are mountains of studies that do indicate that children do best when they’re with their mother and father,” says Backholm.

He cites the most recent study, June of 2012, from the University of Texas in Austin. Research by Mark Regnerus controlled for factors like parent education, income, the perceived level of tolerance for gays in each person’s community, and whether the child was bullied as a result of the parent’s sexual orientation.

Participants who grew up in traditional families reported the lowest average level of problems in their current life, like drug use, unemployment or depressive moods, the study found.

Those who said they had a parent in a same-sex relationship fared somewhat worse than those in other nontraditional families. About 38 percent of those who had a lesbian mother said they were currently on public assistance, for example, compared with 31 percent of those whose parents divorced and 10 percent of those who grew up in a traditional family.

Pedersen says the research more accurately shows that kids do better with two parents and keeping families together is the bigger issue.

He also says a vote supporting Referendum 74 means people are affirming equal rights. They don’t have to agree with homosexuality in order to allow someone else to have the legal right to marry.

“There are all sorts of marriages that all of us might find morally objectionable and they happen all the time in wedding chapels in Las Vegas,” he says. “Permission for two people who love each other to marry does not mean that anyone else society approves of that marriage. It is just a fundamental freedom that we expect our government to provide to all of us.”

“The question is, should we as voters and policy makers say that the definition of marriage doesn’t matter,” Backholm counters, “and that mothers and fathers are interchangeable?”

Statewide polls indicate Referendum 74 is likely to pass, but political watchers point out voters will often tell pollsters – and even their neighbors – they’re in favor of same-sex marriage, only to go against it in the privacy of a voting booth or when their ballot is sealed. That could be why gay marriage measures have failed in 32 other states.

By LINDA THOMAS