H/T Chris.  Protect Marriage Washington is the organization trying to repeal Washington’s domestic partnership law.  They’re not particularly careful with the truth but are big on baseless scare tactics.  One of their hottest scare tactics goes like this:

R-71 opens the way to an easier second challenge of the state’s marriage law. The state’s controversial Defense of Marriage Act, which limits marriage to a relationship between a man and woman, was upheld by the state Supreme Court in a 5-to-4 ruling on July 26, 2006.

“Any time you have a situation where you have all the same kind of protections and rights of another class, so to speak, you have a potential argument for equal protection” under the law, [state Rep. Matt] Shea said in July at the R-71 signature turn-in. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

Trouble with that is, it’s crap.

Two University of Washington law school professors expert in constitutional law say Shea’s and Stickney’s claims are not true. Peter Nicolas, a gay man who teaches a course about gay rights and the Constitution, said the state Supreme Court has made clear that the standard for considering issues of discrimination against gays and lesbians is of the lowest level in the law – something he called a “rational basis review.”

That means Washington courts are more likely to tolerate unequal treatment of gays and lesbians on marital or other issues – unlike states such as Connecticut and California where courts apply a “heightened scrutiny” and have objected to one-man, one-woman marriage laws, Nicolas said.

If R-71 passes, Nicolas said, courts could see it as further evidence that gays and lesbians have political clout. This in turn would hurt gays’ chances of winning a level of judicial review using the equal protection guarantees of the state and federal constitutions, he said.

Stewart Jay, a senior constitutional law professor at UW, said Nicolas is exactly right in his analysis. Jay said the state Supreme Court already cited gays’ success in passing an anti-discrimination law in 2006 as evidence of their growing political power, which is an argument against treating gays as a “suspect class” deserving of additional constitutional protections.

“Surely, legislative passage and popular approval of an ‘all but marriage’ law would be the icing on the cake of this argument,” Jay said. “On the other hand, rejection of R-71 could be interpreted as evidence of political weakness on the part of gays and lesbians, and thus provide a basis for questioning the rationale of” the Supreme Court decision upholding the Defense of Marriage Act.

Did you get that?  What it boils down to is that reality is just about opposite of what Protect Marriage Washington claims it is.  I applaud The News Tribune (Tacoma) for fact checking one of Protect Marriage Washington’s scare points.Looks like Tacoma readers are giving PMW’s scare points the logical once-over too.  Check out this spankin letter just published today.

R-71: Opponents try to have it both ways

MIKE KENYON; Auburn

Published: 10/20/09

I am amused by the “Statement Against” Referendum 71 in the Voters’ Pamphlet. We’re told to reject R-71 “to protect taxpayers” because R-71 “will mean another massive expansion of government.” The very next sentence says that the benefits of R-71 would go to “a very small minority of the population.”

Which is it? If it’s such a small minority of the population, it can’t possibly be a massive expansion of anything.

And if, by chance, this really would be such a “massive expansion” and we’re all going to be “stuck with a multimillion-dollar bill,” then what are we to make of heterosexual marriage? It’s many times more prevalent than domestic partnerships or (gasp!) gay marriage will ever be, so it must be an incredible burden on all of us. We must do away with it immediately!