You may know Seattle comedian Hari Kondabolu from his national performances, his appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, or his role in All About Steve. Here, Hari makes a case for approving Referendum R-71, which would preserve domestic partnership rights in Washington: more ›

There was some hope when the math was getting too tough and many signatures for the "everything but marriage" Referendum 71 were turning up invalid, fake, or unregistered. But with a tally of 121,486 valid voter signatures, the referendum will be ballot-bound this November. All the while, Vermont is off celebrating the new same-sex marriage law with a bowl of Ben & Jerry's newest gay-friendly flavor, Hubby Hubby. One day. (sigh...) more ›

"After yesterday's count, a little over 10 percent of the petitions have been processed and the error rate is 13 percent," says the Seattle Weekly, adding that to pass, "the measure needs an error rate closer to 12 percent." R-71, a referendum to "Preserve Marriage, Protect Children," by opposing the rights of gays to get married or even get legally partnered, has gotten big ups from "Bible-believing" rural churchgoers. In some ways, we're torn, because if bigots didn't try to keep marriage all to themselves, who'd marry 'em? more ›

What with people wanting to put minority rights up to majority vote, we were doing some light R-71-related reading the other day and stumbled upon the Washington Values (sic) Alliance website, on whose logo (modified, on right, for purposes of commentary and mockery) we could spend pages doing a semiotic analysis. There we found "8 Good [sic] Reasons To Defeat Marriage Equality Bills." Here's one of the bullet points that caught our attention:

When the state legislature passed the bill expanding the rights of same-sex domestic partners, it was only a matter of time (19 days to be exact) until we heard the rebuttal from the opposition. Today, anti-gay rights activists have filed a referendum seeking to overturn the recent decision expanding the state's domestic partnership law. Opponents of same-sex marriage (and rights) will need 120,500 valid voters' signatures by July 25 to qualify for a spot on the ballot come November. more ›

Seattlest didn't make it personally to the rally at the University of Washington, but our beautiful and talented sister Anna did, and she's texting us madly with updates and photos. She estimates 200 in attendance to protest John Fay's article in the Daily. more ›

In this guest editorial, Chris Kaasa, a senior at the University of Washington, responds to John Fay's controversial pro-Prop 8 article, published last week in the UW Daily. more ›

A guest post by Chad Goller-Sojourner more ›

Westlake Center, 2:16 p.m. to 3:10 p.m. more ›

For today's Prop 8 march and protest, the weather cooperated nicely. Obviously, God loves a civil rights parade.
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In fact, they've arrived nice and early. more ›

Speaking of the gay, in case you haven't heard, tomorrow's the National Day of Protest Against Prop 8. Here in Seattle, the protesting festivities start early, with people gathering in Volunteer Park beginning at 10:30 a.m. and starting the march down to Westlake Center at noon. If you can't do that walk hungover, meet up at Westlake for the rally at 2 p.m. Please, make an effort to represent at some point tomorrow. For such an important issue, numbers matter. more ›

Dan Savage, on CNN yesterday, debated the Prop 8 debacle with smug asshat Tony Perkins. We really think Savage did a good job arguing with this waste of space. more ›

• LAist celebrated the first days of gay marriage by showing up to the first celebrations in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Los Angeles. And yes, Star Trek's George Takei was there.
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dogs.

While we don't know if Mayor Greg Nickels' latest proposal to ban concealed weapons on city lands will ever become law (we imagine a little thing called the Constitution and this little group called the NRA might have some problems with that one), hundreds of new laws will take effect in Washington this Thursday. more ›

According to E! Online, Mr. Kristy Lee originally proposed to her after her first foray into the bottom three. How romantic. The fella really knows how to charm, apparently. Or at least he really knows how to cheer up his girl. more ›

Woot! Slowly, but surely this Seattlest is starting to see some semblance of equal rights for ourselves and others like us, as a bill has passed the state legislature granting us over 100 more rights. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign it, no problemo. more ›

It's been quite a debacle, but last year, Oregon gained on Washington in the diversity column by announcing, come the New Year, same sex couples could enjoy full domestic partnerships. Starting today, gay folks in Oregon get access to 500 rights, like making health care decisions, suing for wrongful death, being buried next to their partner, accessing their partner's death certificate, and obtaining "personal effects from their deceased partner's body." more ›

As of this morning, queer couples in the state of Washington have about three new rights, which include, but are not limited to: more ›

The clock is ticking down on statewide ballot initiatives that hope to throw themselves into the field of vision of voters in November, and an article in Sunday's Olympian has a good rundown on who's going to make it and who's a laughable crank. The article mentions the boring-but-important initiatives that are likely to appear on ballots as well as all of the hilarious hits like the initiative that would apply the death penalty in cases of election counting errors, the initiative that would nullify straight marriages if they don't lead to offspring and--the most hilarious of them all--the initiative that would roll back the equal rights measures enacted by the state government last year. Unless that last one's not a joke, in which case it's the least hilarious. The Olympian article talks about how initiatives generally have to raise a shitload of money to get on the ballot, but that there could be an exception in the case of this most/least hilarious initiative. more ›

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing! more ›

At least, his Myspace page claimed he supported it for a while this morning. A McCain staffer swiped a template page from Seattle-based news-sharing site Newsvine and when Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson figured out that the template was directing a lot of traffic to an image hosted by Newsvine he swapped it with his own message of tolerance. Instead of a generic list of links McCain's site began displaying an announcement of his support for gay marriage. more ›

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. more ›

--We know the Weekly is cutting its editorial staff, but this is ridiculous. more ›

>>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. more ›

Forget gay marriage. The greatest threat to that holiest of institutions is Mariner manager Mike Hargrove. His idiotic bullpen management this weekend, summed up in this post at USS Mariner, caused at least one marital breach we know of. There must be others. Says a USS Mariner commenter: more ›

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system. more ›

The first weekend of summer is here and Steve Pool told us last night that we're actually going to have some weather that befits the season. We got us a second opinion today that verifies it! It's pretty nice outside right now at 74°, but tomorrow the high is listed at an incredible 82° and even gets a few degrees warmer for Sunday (and Monday also at 85° if you want to stretch the weekend). Woo hoo! It's not only hot and summer time, it's also Pride Weekend. more ›

We are good Seattle liberals. We feel that there should be much more concern over bears roaming Ravenna (next to none) than gay marriage (at none). This is what we do, it is who we are. more ›