Vote for a little love.

There is a referendum on the ballot this November in our state. It's referendum 71 and the jist is that if you vote for it, it would uphold domestic partnership rights laws that were recently passed earlier this year. It is a whole complicated thing where some people from Oregon (some wack-a-doo carpet baggers) essentially want to strike it down because "teh gays" are bad bad bad and this is just on the slippery slope that leads to perdition. (maybe one day there will be marriage equality in Washington State) If you let people have their basic rights, then people will one day be able to marry goats, marshmallows on sweet potatoes would be required at Thanksgiving and stirrup pants would be couture. Oh the humanity. Right.

There are quite a few signs in support of up-holding domestic partnership laws in our neighborhood and there is a deeply personal and tragic reason why. Almost three years ago we had this terrible winter storm. It was one of those "once every hundred years" sort of storms. Power went out for weeks for some people, a lot of trees were knocked over, homes were damaged and so on. It rained a great deal and because we live in a valley and we have had a history of drainage issues there was flooding. Kate Fleming who lived a few blocks away from us, drowned in her basement when she went to try and save some audio recording equipment from her office. (she was a voiceover artist) What added to the tragedy was when her partner kept being blocked from handling all the end of life decisions that most married couples/domestic partners make.

Here is a one minute piece where Charlene talks about what went on. She was lucky in that Kate's family was supportive and did what they could to give her "permission" to handle these things. But imagine someone who had a family that wasn't so supportive?