Mar 14, 2008  |  By: CHRIS JOHNSON  | COMMENTS     

Couples in domestic partnerships in Washington state will enjoy a bevy of new rights and responsibilities thanks to a bill signed into law by the state’s governor.

Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the domestic partnership bill at a public ceremony on Wednesday.
“This bill strengthens Washington by strengthening families,” Gregoire said at the ceremony. “It strengthens families by providing domestic partners with rights and responsibilities they need to maintain stable, loving relationships for them and their children.”

The law will provide couples with 170 rights and responsibilities that married couples enjoy. Matters the law addresses include community property, guardianship of adopted children and the right to refuse to testify against partners in court.

A significant portion of the law deals with what happens when domestic partnerships are dissolved. The community property statute means that individuals dissolving a partnership would have to divide property between them. Further, if a couple was raising a child, the partners would have to set up child support and a parenting plan upon dissolution of the relationship.

Josh Friedes, advocacy director for Equal Rights Washington, said his organization was “extremely pleased with the bill.”

The law still only provides gay couples with 25 percent of the rights enjoyed by married couples, he added.

The law is more than 200 pages long and is the longest piece of legislation that the Washington Legislature passed so far this year.

Rep. Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle), a gay legislator and sponsor of the bill in the House, said the law was “Step Two” in a strategy to secure more rights for gay families in Washington.

“Step One” in the strategy was the establishment of domestic partnerships in Washington last July, Pederson said. Since the enactment, about 3,600 Washington couples have registered for the domestic partnerships. The 2007 law provided couples with hospital visitation rights, the authority to administer a partner’s estate, the authority to order an autopsy for a partner and the ability to inherit property from a partner if there is no will.

Pederson said advocates are trying to incrementally bestow rights to gay couples in Washington to “bring people along … so that we don’t have to fight a referendum — and that if we do have to fight a referendum, we can win.”

In Washington, a law does not go into effect until 90 days have passed after the legislative session. If citizens gather enough petition signatures within those 90 days, the law will go before voters in referendum.

Pederson said he is not expecting this year’s law to go before referendum. He said there was no serious attempt to get the 2007 domestic partnership legislation on the ballot.

Bill Dubay, a 60-year-old Seattle resident who works for the county assessor, said the new law would be helpful for him and his partner, John Reitberger, a 70-year-old retired picture framer, because it addresses aging and end-of-life concerns for couples.

Dubay said property tax exemptions given to married couples as they age will now be available for him and his partner. Further, if an exemption owner dies before his or her partner, the new law would transfer the exemption to the surviving partner. Property bequeathed from one partner to another would also not be subject to inheritance taxes.

Dubay said the only thing disappointing about the law is that “it’s not full marriage.”

“We still have about 180 rights to go, but we’ll still get there,” he said.

Pederson said in his effort to get the bill passed he has “always been very clear that the point of the bill is to move us closer to marriage equality in the state.”

Friedes said Equal Rights Washington has “used the bill as a vehicle to educate legislators and the public about the need for full marriage equality.”

Dan Savage, a gay Seattle-based sex advice columnist and author of “The Commitment,” a book describing his deliberations leading to his decision to marry his boyfriend, Terry Miller, said the bill would “definitely” be helpful for him and other gay residents of Washington.

Savage said he is not in a domestic partnership with Miller, but the enactment of the new law would prompt them to join in such an agreement. He said he was not interested in the previous year’s domestic partnerships provisions because they were too narrow.

“Basically I can order [my partner] an autopsy … isn’t that romantic?” he said.

The ...