Governor Chris Gregoire has a legacy of fighting for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Washingtonians.
It is my honor to induct Governor Chris Gregoire (D) who, first as Washington State's Attorney General and then as Washington's 22nd Governor, has steadfastly led on behalf of the LGBT community. She has shown time and again that she has the compassion, courage and independence to fight for LGBT Washingtonians and their families.
Governor Gregoire was raised in a small Washington town by her mother, who worked as a short-order cook to support the family. Governor Gregoire graduated from the University of Washington with a teaching certificate and Bachelor of Arts degree in speech and sociology and then from Gonzaga University with a law degree. She met her husband, Mike, when they both worked for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, where she began her career in public service.
She went to work as an Assistant Attorney General in the Washington State Attorney General's office where she concentrated on child-abuse cases. After just a few years, she was appointed chief of the Spokane office, and then went to Olympia (the State capitol) in 1981 as the first female Deputy Attorney General, a capacity in which she supervised the natural resource division and played a key leadership role in the move to resolve disputes with the tribes through respectful negotiation instead of acrimonious litigation.
As Deputy Attorney General, she served as legal advisor to Governor Booth Gardner, who in 1986 issued an executive order forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation in State agencies. In 1987, she pushed for, and led, the Attorney General's Task Force on AIDS and was a widely respected voice for diversity.
After serving in the Attorney General's office, she was appointed by Governor Gardner to head the State Department of Ecology.
She was then elected as Washington State Attorney General, the first woman to be elected to the position in the State's history. She was elected to three terms. During her time in office, she worked on children's issues, juvenile justice system reforms, led an effort to strengthen identity theft victims' rights, worked to pass a new ethics law for state government and to find alternatives to litigation in resolving legal disputes. Her office, in conjunction with other state attorneys general, investigated and sued drug companies for violating antitrust laws concerning manipulation of the price and availability of prescription drugs. She was also a national leader in the lawsuit against the tobacco industry in the 1990s and won the state a $4.5 billion share of the settlement.
In 1993, in her first year as Attorney General, she proposed Attorney General request legislation and lobbied the Legislature to add sexual orientation to Washington's malicious harassment statute (Washington State's hate crimes law). This was the first time in Washington's history that protections for lesbian and gay people made their way into state law.
As president of the National Association of Attorneys General in 1999-2000, she focused attention on youth violence, and in 2000 appointed a Bullying Task Force, which developed anti-bullying legislation that she championed in the Legislature in 2001 and again in 2002, when it passed. This was the first state law in the country to address both bullying motivated by bias against protected groups and all bullying regardless of motivation. The law required schools to adopt an anti-bullying policy covering all the protected classes in Washington's hate crimes law, including sexual orientation.
After serving as Attorney General, she was elected Governor in 2004 and was then re-elected in 2008.
Until 2006, Washington lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens were denied basic protections from discrimination. It was that year that the Governor signed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodation, by expanding the scope of protected classes in the State's anti-discrimination law to include sexual orientation and gender identity. It had taken 29 years of effort to get this law through the Legislature. The bill was signed by Governor Gregoire on January 31, 2006 and a group immediately announced it would file a referendum in an attempt to repeal it. Governor Gregoire supported the coalition organized to defeat the attempted repeal. The referendum did not qualify for the ballot.
In 2007, she signed a law expanding the scope of the State's anti-bullying law to prohibit cyber-bullying by students and in 2009, she signed a law amending the definition of sexual orientation to include gender identity and expression in the anti-bullying law.
In 2009, she signed a law adding gender identity or expression to the state's hate-crime law, so that transgender individuals would be protected.
In 2007 she signed the first of three laws granting same-sex couples domestic partnership rights. The first law created the registry and provided certain rights. The year after that, she signed a law expanding those rights. She signed the third and final domestic partnership law in 2009, providing same sex couples all of the rights and protections afforded married couples under state law. Once again conservative groups immediately filed a referendum in an attempt to repeal the law. Governor Gregoire again supported the coalition fighting the attempted repeal. Voters approved retaining the law by more than 53%, making Washington the first state in the nation to have an affirmative statewide vote in favor of relationship recognition for LGBT couples.
In 2011, the Governor signed a law updating Washington’s Uniform Parentage Act, clarifying and expanding the rights and obligations of state registered domestic partners to ensure equal treatment of LGBT parents, including an explicit presumption of parentage for couples registered as Domestic Partners. She also signed a bill recognizing legal same-sex marriages from other states under Washington State’s Domestic Partnership law. As well, during her tenure, the State Department of Health issued new guidelines that are considered reflective of best practices nationally for Transgendered Washingtonians’ identity documents, including birth certificates.
On Jan. 4, 2012 she announced her plans to introduce Governor's request legislation during the 2012 legislative session to legalize marriage rights for same sex couples. "It's time, it's the right thing to do, and I will introduce a bill to do it," she said, during a speech that was webcast live. "I say that as a wife, a mother, a student of the law, and above all as a Washingtonian with a lifelong commitment to equality and freedom."
If the legislation is approved, Washington would be the seventh state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, along with our nation's capitol, Washington, D.C.
During her remarks, the Governor said, "Our gay and lesbian families face the same hurdles as heterosexual families making ends meet, choosing what school to send their kids to, finding someone to grow old with, standing in front of friends and family and making a lifetime commitment. Some argue that the state should deny a marriage license to same-sex couples based on the premise that marriage is for procreation. Do we then deny a license to heterosexual couples who choose not to have children? To those who can't have children or those who adopt? To those who have children through in-vitro fertilization?
Some argue that same-sex marriage weakens the institution of marriage. Is this a role of the state? If so, it has failed miserably with a divorce rate among heterosexual couples now at about 50 percent... Some say domestic partnerships are the same as marriage. That's a version of the discriminatory separate but equal argument of the past. While I understand the experiences of racial minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are not identical, laws that keep some Americans in a separate status are inherently unjust. It is now time for equality of our gay and lesbian citizens, and that means marriage.
When someone asks me what marriage means, I don't think about the legal protections of a marriage license. I think about love, commitment, responsibility, and partnership. Same-sex couples should not be denied the meaning of marriage....Poll after poll show that young Americans--by substantial margins--support same-sex marriage even as their parents or grandparents struggle with it. Why?
Can it be that our children knew some kids on the playground who had two moms instead of a single mom, or two dads instead of a mom and dad?
Can it be because they befriended children of same-sex families, friendships that endure today?
Can it be that today's young Americans see sexual orientation discrimination as just as unacceptable as my generation saw racial discrimination?
We must tell these children and their families that they are every bit as equal and important as all the other families in our state... Please answer the call to support equality again in our great state. It is the right thing to do and it is time."
There is no question that Chris Gregoire's leadership has made an enormous difference in the lives of LGBT Washingtonians and that all of the citizens of our state are the better for it. For all of these reasons, Governor Chris Gregoire is truly an Equality Hero.
 | | Induction by Anne Levinson | Contact Anne Levinson was one of Washington State's first openly gay public officials. She served as a judge, Chair of the state's Utilities Commission, Deputy Mayor, Chief of Staff and Legal Counsel to the Mayor of Seattle as well as liaison to the LGBT community for two different mayors. She served on the National Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund Board and was a founding board member of both the Privacy Fund and Hands off Washington. In 2006, she chaired the statewide campaign that successfully kept an attempted repeal of the state's anti-discrimination law off the ballot. In 2009, she chaired the statewide campaign that defeated the attempted repeal of the state's domestic partnership law and fought back through the federal district, appellate and Supreme Court an attempt by anti-gay and anti-choice groups to gut campaign disclosure laws. | |
