"I tried calling but I guess you are on the phone," State Representative Jamie Pedersen wrote in an e-mail yesterday while I was totally on the phone. "Just wanted to make sure you saw the happy news that Whitman County (yes, in Eastern WA, home of WSU) has flipped into the APPROVE column on R-74!"

And holy bigot-free shit! The late ballot returns, according to the Secretary of State's Office, show that Whitman County—way out in the Palouse—has a majority of voters supporting marriage equality:

r_74_results.jpg

Credit here goes to the Cougs! (Is that what the kids call them, Cougs?) "Together with Skagit County, which flipped yesterday, there are now 10 counties voting to approve," Pedersen kvelled. (That map is still totally depressing, because it shows 29 counties still opposing marriage equality.) But Pedersen continued, "And—not that anyone is counting—Washington now has a full percentage point larger spread than any of the other states that approved marriage." In other words, even though media outlets called Maryland and Maine votes for marriage equality on Election Day, they didn't call Washington State until much later—and now we're approving gay marriage by the widest margin.

Despite most of bigoted Eastern Washington.

Here's the thing: Voters of these Republican rural counties complain that they're not getting enough money, they complain about dwindling populations, they complain that cities don't care about them. Well here's an idea: How about you stop persecuting gay couples? Maybe gay people will stop fleeing your bigoted shithole counties for the cities, and then you can even, like, collect money by issuing more marriage licenses to gay couples.