Right here, right now, history is incubating

Gays can't win at the ballot box.

That has always been the harsh reality. Put the subject of equality for gays and lesbians to a vote of the people — practically any people, in states from deep red to dark blue — and the people have always said: "No. Not here. Not yet."

Until — it appears — now. Right here.

There's a week's worth of ballot-counting remaining in an election everyone is saying is too-close-to-call. But it appears Washington state will be the first in America to approve a gay-equality measure not by court fiat or legislative action, but by the direct will of the people.

It's never happened before. If the slim lead holds for the gay-partnership law Referendum 71, it would be a landmark. Huge.

Not because the law that was on the ballot Tuesday is the last word in this debate.

But because the vote signals, finally, a tipping point of sorts — a bellwether of public acceptance — that has eluded gays and lesbians forever.

Yes, a town here or a county there has voted on the pro-gay side over the years. Usually to bar overt acts of discrimination against gays (which Seattle voters did way back in 1978).

But no state has ever approved a pro-gay vote. The opposite, in fact — dozens of states have voted overwhelmingly to outlaw gay marriage, domestic partnerships or even the ability to adopt kids. Those votes actively consigned gays and lesbians to second-class-citizen status.

In 1997, even supposedly liberal, libertarian Washington rejected a gay anti-discrimination law by a landslide, 60 percent to 40 percent. That vote set back the drive for gay equality here by nearly a decade.

And on Tuesday, voters in Maine repealed a gay-marriage law that had been passed by that state's Legislature.

The vote here on Tuesday was far from a landslide. But in it you could see the slow wheel of societal change turning.

Referendum 71, which grants "everything but marriage" rights to gay and lesbian couples (going well beyond the scope of the 1997 anti-discrimination law that was blasted at the ballot box), was receiving slightly more than half the vote. Voters were approving it in most Western Washington counties around Puget Sound, and rejecting it in the rest of the state.

The take-away: The gay-rights movement has won over to its side 10 to 12 percent of this state in the past dozen years.

That's about 1 percent per year. That may not seem like much. But sweeping political change occurs when the center 5 or 10 percent shifts to the other side.

When it comes to gay acceptance, that shift has now happened. That's the big story of Election 2009. And it's going to keep inching like that, a mostly one-way tide. Toward equality.

Speaking of tides, the economic anxiety that buoyed Republicans and anti-tax candidates in other parts of the nation failed to buoy initiative huckster Tim Eyman here.

His Initiative 1033 went down to defeat, even though he had said (and I felt he was right) that this year was one of the best political climates he'd had for passing one of his government-restricting measures.

Maybe this initiative was just a particularly bad idea (it was). Or maybe the slow wheel of change has tilted against Eyman, too. Time for him to take the hint.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.