It's an interesting time to be living in Washington State.
For one thing, you can walk into a store and buy hard liquor. Tequila at Safeway... Vodka at Wal-Mart... Rum at Costco... when it comes to buying alcohol, our choices are overwhelming now. This is a radical change from the old days when only government liquor stores were allowed to sell such beverages. And by "old days" I mean "last month." It's going to take a while before I get over the shock of walking into the grocery store and seeing booze for sale. Of course, having such easy access to said booze will probably help.
But the bigger change is yet to come.
Maybe.
Back in February, Washington lawmakers passed a marriage equality bill which legalized same-sex marriage. This mobilized the anti-equality brigade, because some people feel that basic human rights and freedoms should be put to a vote. Signatures against equality were collected... enough to force a ballot measure... so now we wait until November to see if an entire group of tax-paying citizens get the same right to marry that everybody else has.
Current polling shows marriage equality winning out, but I'll believe it when I see it. Sadly, you can never underestimate the power of disinformation, fear, lies, and ignorance when it comes to the public at large. And I'm sure that we're going to be seeing plenty of that in the coming months.
Which is really disheartening when you consider the consequences for people whose lives are affected.
Last month I shared an incredibly moving video which explained why marriage equality is so important. Today that video is now a Kickstarter project to become an actual film BY LINDA BLOODWORTH-THOMPSON (of Designing Women fame)...
If you can spare a few bucks to help counter the disinformation, fear, lies, and ignorance, head over to Kickstarter and donate, won't you?
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didn’t the price of booze go up too? my in-laws own liquor stores down here in OR and we hear that a buttload of taxes got added onto the liquor now that it’s privates sales. they’v had increased sales as all the people from vancouver are coming down to to get cheaper alcohol.
Hopefully it passes! Carrie Underwood just came out in favor of gay marriage and I thought that was cool, considering country music is usually heavy on the Christianity thing, but now she’s getting so much hate. People are even threatening to kill her because of what she said.
The whole thing just makes me sad.
Washington is weird. Glad to see your help with the cause.
Yeah, just yesterday I walked into the Capitol Hill Safeway and was totally overwhelmed by the 8 foot long display case of liquor. Snark aside, I hope marriage equality gets a better deal…Thanks for doing your part!
I have high hopes for those that support equality and how they will vote in November,
As for the liquor being sold at grocery stores now, my wife’s sister who lives in Vancouver, WA says the cost of each bottle went up a lot. Looking at a recent Fred Meyer ad this weekend while I was at their house, it says taxes of 20.5% and a $3.77 per litter fee are added at the cash register. Are you seeing the same thing at Safeway?