Thursday Q&A: Anne Levinson on why you should approve Referendum 71

This week’s Q&A is with Anne Levinson, chair of the Approve Referendum 71 campaign. I talked to her about why she’s in favor of the referendum and some things she wants to clear up about it. Next Thursday, I’ll talk to a representative from the opposite camp on why they want the referendum to be defeated. Don’t miss it.

Q: In your own words, why should someone vote to approve Referendum 71, which would extend the state-granted rights and responsibilities of marriage to state-registered domestic partners?
Levinson: We have a law in this state called domestic partnership law and in our state in particular it’s broken into three parts. So we actually have laws passed in 2007, 2008 and 2009 that, together, collectively provide basic legal protections to committed couples who are in domestic partnerships. The purpose of the domestic partnership laws is to ensure that all Washington families are treated the same with the same legal protections, the same rights and the same obligations as their neighbors.

So under the domestic partnership laws, same sex couples and opposite sex couples with at least one partner age 62 or older can register for a domestic partnership in order that their families have these legal protections.

In June of this year, a group of people who are opposed to domestic partnerships filed a referendum to appeal the domestic partnership law. Voters are asked whether they want to approve the domestic partnership law. In order to keep the domestic partnership law, voters have to vote to approve it.

It won’t go back to the laws passed in 2008 and 2007, but it will roll back a significant number of legal protections. It won’t wipe away all the laws. But that would be akin to saying to a married couple, We are going to take away some of the rights you have as a married couple but you can still be married.
Rejecting this law would irreparably harm a number of families across the state.

There are now more than 12,000 people in Washington who are registered in domestic partnerships. That is the number of people whose lives will be impacted.

These people live in every county, in every part of the state. So if the laws are rejected, their legal protections will be stripped away and they’ll be left without an essential safety net in essence and particularly in times of crisis. We’ve all seen the unfortunate tragedies that happen in life and what happens when a family does not have the protections.

Q: What specific benefits would domestic partners get if Referendum 71 is approved?
Levinson: For example, this law allows domestic partners to take unpaid leave to care for a critically ill loved one without being fired for doing so. In Washington state, married couples can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave if a spouse is critically ill. It’s not paid, it’s unpaid. But your employer cannot fire you for taking that leave. Without this law, a gay or lesbian individual who did that – who took unpaid leave to care for a critically ill partner could be fired.

This law allows partners to cover a domestic partner and family with health insurance. It allows partners to make sure their hard earned pension or death benefits will go to a domestic partner or their children.

For example, if you’re a firefighter – even a volunteer firefighter – and you are killed, without this law, your partner or your children don’t have access to your worker’s compensation, your pension or your death benefits. You could be a teacher or a librarian who’s worked 20 or 30 years and without this law, your partner would not have a right to your pension that you had earned over all those years. If this law is rejected that would be a protection that would be lost.

Similarly, business succession: In our state, if you’re married and the spouse died, the business stays with the (surviving) spouse. Without this law, a domestic partner would not have that right and unless there was specific provision in a will, privately drafted, you could lose the business.
What this law is about is making sure that committed couples who want to take care of each other and their families have the protection they need.

The law does not affect schools, does not affect the definition of marriage.

Q: On that note, what claims are opponents making that you want to clear up?
Levinson: Opponents for the domestic partnership law have engaged in a campaign to try to confuse voters from the very beginning, the petitions themselves have language – when they were asking people to sign, to put this measure on the ballot, the petitions stated across the top that this law would force schools to have certain kinds of curriculum. As we all know, education curriculum in our state is not done through the domestic partnership law so that is obviously a specious argument.

They have asserted in their materials that this law would legalize same-sex marriage and, in fact, the reason that we have domestic partnership sis that in our state we don’t have same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships are an alternative – not equal – legal mechanism for committed couples.

These arguments are the same arguments they’ve made in California, the same in Maine. They use this same rhetoric in every state – often referred to as scare tactics. They try to assert or attempt to convince people that religious freedoms will be inhibited, that clergy will no longer be able to speak as they wish, that teachers will no longer be able to teach as they wish. This law in no way impacts religious freedom. It’s just simply not truthful.

Q: On the flip side, is there anything that the domestic partnership law would do that you don’t think people understand?
Levinson: For most people, they still perhaps don’t know that everybody doesn’t have the same rights. When you have those rights and you don’t live with the lack of them, you don’t necessarily realize that there are still people who are left in a very vulnerable position.

We saw this three years ago when they put an issue on the ballot to take repeal anti-discrimination laws. These socially conservative organizations and Tim Eyman said the same sorts of things – that these protections weren’t needed, that no one would be fired, that everyone was already protected. We saw, in this day and age, that you could still be fired from your job or denied housing or insurance based on sexual orientation. What that reminded us of is the importance of education to make sure that people know what families go through on a daily basis and why these laws are so important to them.

There’s another aspect to this as well that a lot of people may not be aware that domestic partners who are heterosexual seniors – oftentimes, seniors who are widowed or divorced and want to be married, if they were to remarry they risk their Social Security, pension or military benefits that they’ve earned or that their spouse had earned over the years. Particularly, for older women, they’re the most vulnerable because in decades past they were dependent on their husband’s income and so their Social Security benefit is really their only safety net. To put them in the position to have to give that up in order to marry the person they love is a terrible choice. So domestic partnerships provide them a legal alternative to have a committed relationship, have the legal protections and not lose their hard earned benefits.

Those who are trying to reject the domestic partnership law say that seniors shouldn’t be living in sin. It’s not a particularly compassionate response.

A couple other things: To my knowledge, there are no mainstream organizations anywhere in the state that are espousing the reject position — that is, the repeal of the law. There are more than 500 business, labor unions, nonprofit organizations and faith-based organizations that are taking a stand in favor of domestic partnerships. There are large employers like Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks. There are clergy from a variety of denominations, every major newspaper in the state. Among the nonprofits, the League of Women Voters, firefighters, nurses association, Bar association, psychological association…

Q: Anything else?
Levinson: The biggest thing is that people need to know that these rights will go away if Referendum 71 is rejected. That because of the way referenda are structured in our state, you have to take an affirmative act to keep on the books a law that the legislature passed. The laws already there, these protections would have gone into effect in July. These families remain at risk if Referendum 71 fails. The protections will no longer be provided to same-sex partners and to seniors.

Tags: R71, referendum 71, Thursday Q&A