Pressure to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples surged in Washington yesterday as gay rights activists filed a lawsuitcharging discrimination in King County, and others marched through the streets of Seattle demanding the legal right to wed.
Their cries were echoed in Olympia, where several state legislators took up the call. And Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels joined in by announcing that the city would honor out-of-state marriages for city employees who are gay.
The watershed day began early, when six couples -- gay, lesbian, professional and of various ethnicities -- appeared at the King County Administration Building at 8:30 a.m. and asked to apply for a marriage license. Each was summarily turned away, and moments later, Lambda Legal, the national gay rights organization, announced that it was joining the Northwest Women's Law Center to sue King County Executive Ron Sims for violating the couples' civil rights.
But Sims appeared to welcome the measure. Although sworn to uphold Washington law, which defines marriage as an oath taken between a man and a woman, Sims made plain his distaste for it.
"I have no choice but to enforce the law. It doesn't mean that I like it," he said. "It doesn't mean that I find it just."
The county executive, who is African American, made repeated reference to his own experience of discrimination and recalled "searing images" of whites denying rights to blacks -- including the right to interracial marriage -- during the 1950s and early '60s. Committed couples, whatever their color and orientation, were again being treated unfairly, he said.
"We should never deny the right of those individuals to be married, but we do," Sims said. "It is time for this country to move forward."
A lawsuit against King County had been in the works for years, according to Jamie Pedersen, co-chair of the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. But the recent support for gay marriage among government officials in San Francisco, Portland, Massachusetts and yesterday, Asbury Park, N.J., spurred the two Seattle groups to file.
"The explosion of support for gay marriage across the country absolutely made us move faster," Pedersen said. "The train was leaving the station and we could either be on it, or be chasing it."
The courts appear poised to grapple with the question. Yesterday a judge in Oregon refused to issue a preliminary injunction invalidating the marriage licenses granted there to more than 700 couples last week. He assigned the case to another jurist in the expectation that it would eventually go to trial.
Meanwhile, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng expects to see the Washington state lawsuit in Superior Court before this summer.
It has been carefully crafted as a test case, with biographies of the six plaintiff couples packaged neatly for reporters.
Mala Nagarajan and Vega Subramaniam were among those profiled.
"We were ecstatic to be part of it," said Subramaniam, who received a telephone call Sunday evening requesting their participation. The couple, who were wed in a Hindu ceremony two years ago, have been together since 1998.
Michael and David Serkin-Poole, who are also plaintiffs, have been together for 22 years and raised three children. Unlike other gay couples in Seattle who have planned to marry in San Francisco, Massachusetts or Portland -- with uncertain recognition in their own hometown -- the Serkin-Pooles are intent on making their union official in Seattle.
"I was born here, I've worked here and we are committed to doing it here," said Michael Serkin-Poole. "We've had two rings in a locked drawer for years, ready to go. Sometimes we just take them out and look."
The lawsuit, said his partner, David, was "a wonderful start to a process that we hope will one day lead to us being husbands in the eyes of the law."
State Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, who is openly gay, applauded the move to push same sex marriage into the courts.
"This affects all the citizens of this state, in every county and every city," he said. Last week, while other legislators were refusing to hear a bill ending discrimination against gays and lesbians, Murray observed that marriage equality had been among the first issues he'd faced as a state representative, and he suspected it would be one of the last.
"I hope, somewhere in between, I'll be able to get married," he said.
County prosecutor Maleng has been critical of San Francisco and Oregon officials who took action upon themselves, and said that bringing the question to the courts was "the right way to decide constitutional issues." He added, "Constitutional issues are decided by judges, not by executive branch officials."
Maleng had already discussed the matter with Sims before yesterday's lawsuit, and he acknowledged that the executive was under intense political pressure to jump on the bandwagon and issue gay-marriage licenses.
By late morning, Sims was standing atop a granite planter outside his office, being applauded by dozens of gay rights activists for his verbal stand against the state law. The demonstrators had marched from Capitol Hill, carrying signs that read "Support All of America's Families."
Public outcry against them was minimal. Three cab drivers shook their heads in quiet disapproval as the parade moved by, and three protesters stood outside the county building promising damnation for homosexuals. Other than that, said police at the scene, the gay rights march had been remarkably calm.
Among the marchers, 36 couples -- including Angela Rinaldo and her partner of 13 years, Miriam D'Arco -- walked up to the licensing bureau and were politely turned away. Both women said they were encouraged by the lawsuit but exasperated at its necessity. Dorian Torres, their 27-year-old son, wore a shirt depicting Christ and walked between the two.
"They're my moms, and everyone in the family wants them to get married," he said, throwing an arm around each.
"We're here. We're queer. Get over it," said the march's organizer, Brian Peters, as he walked into the county building with his boyfriend, D.J. Klaudt.
Denied a marriage license application, the two stood outside Sims' office, rallying marchers.
"Our voice is getting louder and louder and louder," Peters told the crowd. "Pretty soon they won't be able to turn a deaf ear."
P-I reporters Larry Lange and Jennifer Lloyd and The Associated Press contributed to this report. P-I reporter Claudia Rowe can be reached at 206-448-8320 or [email protected]
