Ready for a video break?  Here is the premier ad that the Washington anti-domestic partnership org Protect Marriage Washington has unveiled.  And yes, this is for real.  Donate now to help us drown out this rubbish with some sanity.

In the beginning, GOD created the heaven and the earth,and formed man.  And he made a woman and brought her unto the man.  Thus God established, and defined marriage between a man and a woman.  What god has joined together, let not man put asunder.

Senate bill 5688 violates God’s mandate.  On November 3rd, vote to preserve marriage and protect our children on Referendum 71.  Reject senate bill 5688. Paidforbyportectmarriagewashington

Have you donated yet?

Protect Marriage Washington’s togas ‘n tigers ad isn’t all they’ve lined up for Washington t.v. viewers.  They also have two Prop 8-style lie-fests spooled up which feature rhetoric you all are already too well versed in.  One video is 45 seconds and the other 60 seconds.  Both videos are a re-working of an ad that PMW’s campaign manager Larry Stickney aired early March, 2009 in an effort to sway/bully solidly pro-equality legislators.  Did he really think these bullying ads would change the votes of senators who have sponsored and/or voted for every DP bill to date?  You can enjoy that set of videos here.

Let us dissect the lies in the 60 second ad.  Shall we begin?  But first, will you pledge to donate so many dollars per lie we find to the Approve 71 campaign so that we can effectively motivate our voter base?

VO:  Last Spring in Olympia, a law was passed that redefines marriage to include homosexual relationships.  This new law has far-reaching consequences.  Like allowing public schools to teach that gay marriage is normal and healthy.  Whether parents approve or not.

The sponsor of this law says, those who disagree with homosexual marriage should face being fined, fired or even jailed until they relent.

Text:  In Massachusetts a similar law passed…

Text:  As a result…school libraries across the state have added explicit pornographic books to normalize homosexual behavior.

Text:  A parent was jailed overnight for demanding the ability to opt his kindergarten child out of homosexual instruction.

Text:  Catholic Charities had to abandon adoption services rather than submit to regulations requiring them to allow homosexuals to adopt children in their care…

VO:  On November 3rd, vote to preserve marriage and protect our children.  on Referendum 71, reject senate bill 5688.  Paid for by Protect Marriage Washington.

Well, at least the first eight words are true!

Lie One:

VO:  Last Spring in Olympia, a law was passed that redefines marriage to include homosexual relationships.

As the Referendum 71 ballot language written by our republican Attorney General states, “a domestic partnership is not a marriage”.  If SB 5688 created civil marriages, the senior citizens entering into them would be considered married by the federal government.  They aren’t.  If the domestic partnership law created civil marriages, same-sex couples could marry, the legal contract would be called a marriage, it could be solumnized by a justice of the peace or consenting clergy, it would be transportable across state lines and it would ask the federal government to provide the couples so joined with the over 1,049 federal rights, responsibilities and obligations of civil marriage.  The domestic partnership law does none of these things.  Domestic partnerships are a parallel institution according state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners the same state-level legal rights, responsibilities, and obligations as those enjoyed by married spouses.  But by domestic partnerships are a separate and inferior institution to civil marriage.  Domestic partnerships are not marriage.

Lie Two:

This new law has far-reaching consequences.  Like allowing public schools to teach that gay marriage is normal and healthy.  Whether parents approve or not.

Washington state school curriculum does not mention marriage at all.  There is no mention of curriculum in the domestic partnership law.  There is nothing about the existence of domestic partnerships that mandates any changes to school curriculum.

Lie Three:

The sponsor of this law says, those who disagree with homosexual marriage should face being fined, fired or even jailed until they relent.

As Jeremy at Good As You has revealed, the text quoted by the ad was from an opinion piece written by a homophobic gay man named David Benkof.  Benkof egregiously misrepresented WA state senator Ed Murray, who strongly refuted Benkhof’s lie, saying “That’s not at all what I said, and Benkof’s deliberate misrepresentation of my views does damage to them and to me.”

Lies Four and Five:

Text:  In Massachusetts a similar law passed…

Text:  As a result…school libraries across the state have added explicit pornographic books to normalize homosexual behavior.

Massachusetts has never passed a domestic partnership law.  Curious that the ad doesn’t attempt to name the titles of the alleged pornographic books.  Why have we never heard of this horror, it it is true?

Lie Six:

Text:  A parent was jailed overnight for demanding the ability to opt his kindergarten child out of homosexual instruction.

David Parker was arrested when he refused to leave school grounds.  He demanded that the school inform him before anything related to gay people was even mentioned in school, even casual conversation by other students.  Federal judges all the way up to and including the Supreme Court of the United States dismissed his subsequent lawsuit against the school.

Lie Seven:

Text:  Catholic Charities had to abandon adoption services rather than submit to regulations requiring them to allow homosexuals to adopt children in their care…

Catholic Charities choose to abandon adoption services, for which they received state money, rather than abide by the state anti-discrimination law to which that state money bound them.  The funny thing is that Catholic Charities had a history of adopting out kids to gay parents, but the church hierarchy apparently decided to shut down the entire operation for dramatic effect rather than continue with business as usual: placing needy children with adoptive parents regardless of sexual orientation.

Lie Eight:

VO:  On November 3rd, vote to preserve marriage and protect our children.  on Referendum 71, reject senate bill 5688.  Paid for by Protect Marriage Washington.

I won’t count the “preserve marriage” lie because it is a repeat of Lie One.  Rejecting the domestic partnership law does not protect children.  In fact, it hurts children.  Children of gay parents deserve to have the same legal protections that the children of people in heterosexual marriages have.  To make them suffer because of animus towards their parents is cruel.

I count eight lies.  Did PMW’s profligacy bankrupt anyone who pledged to donate so many dollars per lie?

We’re in trouble out here in Washington, and I’m asking for your help.  This May, the WA legislature passed and Gov. Gregoire signed a bill that expanded WA Registered Domestic Partnerships to be fully parallel to state civil marriages.  But on Sep. 2nd, a coalition of radical-right evangelicals managed to get a referendum qualified for the ballot, Referendum 71, which asks voters to approve or reject the new law.  WA is now a vote-by-mail state.

There is solid  support for DPs in the general WA population, but our support among likely voters in this off-year election is razor thin at 51%.  So, we need to motivate our supporters to actually vote.  That takes money.

With ballots hitting mailboxes October 16th, our campaign season is only 6 weeks long and hasn’t given us the lead time necessary to raise adequate funds before a major donor ban goes into effect on Oct 12.  After that date, no donor can contribute more than $5,000 cumulative.  

Our opposition hasn’t been doing any serious fundraising in the past several weeks, confounding our ability to show our need to our supporters.  We suspect that the opposition can do this and are doing this deliberately because they have a big benefactor who will dump big money and/or services into the state for them around the time the major donor ban goes into effect.  This of course would undercut our ability to match their effort later in the campaign.  The opposition campaign includes local affiliates of Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and Alliance Defense Fund.

We do have something good going for us this week: a set of donors from Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Employees at Microsoft (GLEAM), acting as individuals, have pledged to match each dollar of your donations over the next week, up to $10,000. Please help make sure all Washington families are equal: Donate to the Approve Referendum 71 campaign.

Thank you from one of the 12,202 straight senior citizen and LGBT domestic partners in Washington!  We can win this!

p.s. If the radical-right manages to roll back DPs in WA, this may embolden them to engage on a new front: DPs and CUs in semi-equality-tolerant states.  Yuck.

Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group.