Washington state legislators voted Wednesday to approve a bill that would allow gay marriage after it was approved by the state senate last week. Now, the bill must be signed into law by the governor (who is expected to do so), making Washington the seventh state to allow gay marriage.
Currently, our home state of New Jersey has bills in process that are aimed at legalizing gay marriage, but given that we have a governor who has pledged to veto any sort of marriage equality bill we have a lot more fighting to do. One NJ senator has introduced a bill that would decide the issue simply by a ballot decision rather than through a bill, but this is not necessarily good for NJ because it would establish an amendment to the state Constitution banning gay marriage if the majority voted as such. This is problematic because people's basic rights should not be decided upon by votes; they should have these rights the same as anyone else. Newark mayor Cory Booker sums it up better than I can, though:
Hopefully one day very soon we as a state and as a country can wake up and realize that no one deserves to be discriminated against based on sexual orientation.
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