Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) — who is scheduled to sign marriage equality legislation on Monday — has personally pledged to contact fellow Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and convince him to sign legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Christie has threatened to veto the bill currently under consideration in the state legislature.

During a radio interview with Wall Street Journal’s The Daily Wrap with Michael Castner, Gregoire said she has received an outpouring of support from people around the world since coming out for equal marriage rights, including a note from a 16-year-old girl who had contemplated suicide:

GREGOIRE: One that sticks in my mind is a 16-year-old who had finally disclosed to her parents that she was lesbian and they had accepted her and she still contemplated suicide. And then to have me come out, a person in a position like I’m in to say that she’s okay and that she’s to be respected for who she is, meant the world to her.

CASTNER: I never do this, but I’m going to ask you anyway because I have an opportunity and most people don’t get to talk to governors. Would you pick up the phone and call governor Christie and tell him what you just told our audience?

GREGOIRE: Yes, I would because I feel a good working relationship with Governor Christie. I respect him as a fellow governor, I have worked with him on a number of issues, so yea, I would feel very comfortable sharing with him, my personal journey the overwhelming response that I’ve received and how good I feel about myself today and I have not felt good about this issue and about where I stood for a number of years.

Listen:

Mitt Romney touted his opposition to marriage equality at CPAC this afternoon by mocking the 2003 state Supreme Court decision which found that Massachusetts did not have a rational basis for denying same-sex couples marriage on due process and equal protection grounds.

“The Supreme court found a right to same-sex marriage in the constitution written by John Adams. I presume he would be surprised,” Romney said to great laughter, and bragged about using an obscure 1913 law (originally intended to limit interracial marriage), to keep out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts:

ROMNEY: I fought to have a stay on that decision, then pushed for a marriage amendment to our Constitution. We lost by only one vote in the legislature. And I successfully prohibited out- of-state couples from coming to our state to get married and then going home. On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage.

When I am president, I will defend the Defense of Marriage Act, and I will fight for an amendment to our Constitution that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.

Watch it:

Romney sought to position himself as a real conservative and appeal to the Republican base, but his remarks represent a stark contrast from his past support for the LGBT community. In 1994, while running for a seat in the Senate, Romney told the GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, “We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There isn’t much Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) finds constitutional, from child labor laws and food safety protections to medical malpractice reform, FEMA, and poverty aid. Apparently, though, Lee’s version of the Constitution protects employers’ rights to fire workers just because they are gay.

Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), ThinkProgress asked Lee if he supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), legislation that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Lee explained that he didn’t, saying that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause was only intended to protect against racial discrimination:

KEYES: ENDA is something that rumbles every now and then in Congress. What’s your take, do you think it should be legal to fire someone just because they’re gay or transgender, or do you think that’s not in the purview of the Constitution?

LEE: Look, I think employers ought not make their hiring decisions based on categories like that, and I don’t think most of them do.

KEYES: But whether or not it should be a crime.

LEE: Whether it should be a federal crime, specific to federal law? No. I think the federal government has expanded its role into regulation of matters that historically that were in the purview of the states. [...]

KEYES: Is there any difference between firing someone for being gay rather than firing someone because of their race?

LEE: Yes, yes. The 14th Amendment — in fact the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments — were adopted specifically around the race issue. So, yeah, there is a difference.

In January, LGBT work rights groups ramped up pressure on the Obama administration to issue an executive order prohibiting the government from contracting with companies that do not have non-discrimination policies protecting LGBT workers, but the White House has yet to publicly embrace the policy. According to one report, 16 million workers would receive expanded protections from such an order.

Obama supports expanded protections for LGBT workers, but Lee’s views aren’t just out-of-step with the president and leading Democrats. According to recent polls, a majority of Republican voters also support expanding ENDA to protect LGBT workers from workplace discrimination.

Marcia Walden

This week, the 11th Circuit ruled against Marcia Walden, a counselor for the Center for Disease Control’s Employee Assistance Program in Atlanta. The CDC had laid her off after a lesbian client complained that Walden’s need to refer her to another counselor for religious reasons made her feel “judged and condemned.” Walden sued, arguing that she was removed for her job in violation of her First Amendment religious freedom.

In the decision, the Court ruled that Walden was rightly fired — not for her religious beliefs, but for the way she insisted on imposing them on the gay clients they impacted:

We accept that Ms. Walden’s sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit her from encouraging or supporting same-sex relationships through counseling… Instead, the record is clear that Dr. Chosewood and Ms. Zerbe removed Ms. Walden because of the manner in which she handled Ms. Doe’s referral, and because they were concerned that she would behave the same way if a similar situation were to arise in the future.  And, significantly, Ms. Walden testified that it was not part of her “religious beliefs” to tell clients, including Ms. Doe, that she could not counsel them due to her religious beliefs or personal values.  Instead, she said she wanted “to be honest with my clients.” [...]

Ms. Walden contends she did not, in fact, insist upon voicing her objections to same-sex relationships in connection with future referrals.  Instead, she merely refused to state that she did not have experience in relationship counseling whenreferring clients.  But she also did not volunteer an alternative approach to future referrals.

Given how heated the rhetoric around so-called “religious liberty” has become, this decision is important to highlight, as it distinguishes between what a person believes and how a person acts upon those beliefs. Similar to the recent case when the 11th Circuit ruled against an Augusta State University counseling student who was expelled for violating professional ethics when it came to gay clients, Walden’s compulsion to inform patients that she does not approve of their lifestyles oversteps her religious rights. As the decision points out, Walden’s actions made an already vulnerable client “feel worse.”

Individuals have a right to believe and practice whatever religion they choose, but that does not entitle them to compromise the integrity of their work or the rights of others.