Nw Gay-Rights Advocates Jubilant Over Ruling

For gay-rights advocates in Washington state, there was clear reason to celebrate Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“It’s going to be a great benefit to secure the rights of gay people,” said Katie Urbanek, one of the organizers of Spokane’s Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

“This is something we’ve been striving for,” she said.

“This is an incredible moral victory,” said state Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, the only openly gay state legislator.

“People are jubilant. I’ve been talking to people all morning and the feeling I get is at least one weight has been lifted from one shoulder. And it’s kind of exciting.”

The court handed gay-rights proponents their biggest legal victory, rejecting a Colorado constitutional amendment that forbid laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination.

In its most significant gay-rights case in a decade, the court ruled 6-3 that the amendment, approved by Colorado voters by a 53 percent margin in 1992, violates homosexuals’ constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

The justices said the amendment denied gays a political right enjoyed by everyone else - the chance to seek protection from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

Washington state has been the site of a number of efforts to restrict gay rights, including two initiatives last year that failed to gain enough signatures.

Initiative 166, similar to the Colorado amendment, would have barred state or local gay-rights ordinances that deal with discrimination in housing or employment, and would have barred schools from teaching that homosexuality is acceptable. Initiative 167 would have banned adoption by homosexuals.

Annetta Small of Bellingham, the state campaign chair for Initiative 166, said the Supreme Court’s decision would only make people more cynical.

“Here are unelected judges invalidating an amendment after the citizens overwhelmingly voted for it,” she said.

“I just think the will of the people has been overridden by an imperial judiciary.”

“We’re saddened by this. We’re devastated by this. We’re angry. We believe this is legislating from the Supreme Court bench,” said Philip Ramsdell, national field director of the U.S. Citizens Alliance, an anti-gay rights group.

“We’re going down a road that, I’m sure, polygamists and others will say they are being discriminated against,” he said. “This opens the door for all kinds of strange things.”

The ruling won’t stop Idaho’s battle over a proposed anti-gay rights initiative.

“It would have been nice if the Idaho Citizen’s Alliance would withdraw the initiative,” said Alicia Flinn of Decline to Sign, which is fighting the initiative. “Why put the people of Idaho through this when it’s costly, divisive, unnecessary and unconstitutional?

“But they won’t, so we have a campaign to run.”

The director of the Idaho Citizens Alliance conceded that the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling, involving a measure passed by Colorado voters in 1992, is a setback. But Kelly Johannsen said the decision will not stop the signature drive to put the anti-gay initiative back on Idaho’s ballot.

“In fact, I think it’s going to kind of fuel a fire for the importance of this issue,” she said. “We agree with the three justices who said the Colorado amendment was just trying to stop special treatment.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Associated Press Staff writers Gita Sitaramiah and Ken Olsen contributed to this report.