<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Less than five miles to our west, V-Peeps, a same-sex couple can get married and light up a bong at their wedding reception . . . and the only thing a police officer will tell them is . . . "Don't drive."</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of today's (September 5, 2014) Spokesman-Review.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">--------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><h1 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; line-height: 1.2; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Spokane-area native Michael Shiosaki embraces role as Seattle mayor’s husband</h1><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SEATTLE – Michael Shiosaki hadn’t given much thought to titles before a reporter stuck a microphone in his face as the first election night results in this city’s mayor’s race showed his husband, Ed Murray, headed for victory.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What do we call you? the reporter asked.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Interesting question, and a unique one for Seattle and most of the nation’s cities. What title does the same-sex spouse of the mayor-elect have?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I think it’s first gentleman or something like that,” Shiosaki answered, half joking.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The title was as good as any, and it stuck. The Spokane Valley native, third-generation member of one of Spokane’s most prominent Japanese-American families, a person who has been ringside for most of the fights over equality for sexual orientation, is Seattle’s first gentleman.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It has been an interesting transition,” he said of the past nine months in that role.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s a position that has offered incredible opportunities, such as meeting President Barack Obama both in Seattle and at the White House and riding in the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory parade. But it also comes with demands “to be everywhere, all the time” and the need for a security detail.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Shiosaki still works as planning and development director for Seattle Parks and Recreation, in a third-floor office in the International District with a view of CenturyLink Field, a position he’s had for about three years. Technically, Murray is his boss. “But I remind people I’ve worked for the city a lot longer than Ed,” he said.</span></p><h3 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 21px 0px 7px; overflow: visible !important;"><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Inland Northwest roots</span></font></h3><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Michael Shiosaki, 53, grew up in the Spokane Valley. His grandfather Kisaburo Shiosaki came to the United States from Japan in 1904 to work on the railroads, went back to Japan after 11 years for his bride Tori, and the two settled in Hillyard. There they opened a laundry that is now on the Spokane Register of Historic Places. Michael’s father, Fred, and uncles worked in the laundry growing up, and when World War II came along Fred enlisted in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the much-decorated Japanese-American Army unit. He was wounded in France, came home, earned a chemistry degree from Gonzaga and married Lily. They had two children, Nancy and Michael, moved to East Dean Avenue in the Valley in 1961 and lived there until recently.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Shiosaki learned the importance of civic involvement from his father, a former environmental manager for the old Washington Water Power Co. who served on the state Fish and Wildlife Commission for many years.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Growing up in mostly white Spokane Valley, Shiosaki recalls his University High School graduating class having three Asian-Americans, one African-American and about 370 Caucasians. “I had a great childhood in the ’burbs,” he said. “In some ways, it made me feel I needed to fit in. It makes you adapt.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in landscape architecture, he worked first for the city of Bellevue planning parks, and in 2001 he was hired by Seattle Parks and Recreation. It’s a job that lets him design public spaces people will use for 100 years, he said.</span></p><h3 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 21px 0px 7px; overflow: visible !important;"><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fight for gay rights</span></font></h3><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Murray and Shiosaki, who have been together since shortly after meeting on a camping trip to Mount Rainier with mutual friends in August 1991, have long been in the public eye. They were “an out, gay couple” as Murray spent 17 years in the Legislature, first in the House and later in the Senate where he rose to be majority leader. During that time Murray helped push the ball forward on equality for sexual orientation, first with anti-discrimination laws, then domestic partnership and finally with a bill that legalized same-sex marriage in 2012.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">George Bakan, senior editor and publisher of Seattle Gay News for the last 30 years, described Shiosaki and Murray as a power couple who worked together through what was known as the “small steps approach” to reach equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender citizens.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’ve always admired that crusading sense both of them have,” Bakan said. “They were committed to each other and both were willing to make a commitment to the political point.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Shiosaki recalls being in Murray’s office on the morning the same-sex marriage bill was scheduled for a vote. There were only 24 sure “yes” votes, so the outcome was in doubt until Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, who had been undecided, came to say she’d vote for it. “It was a huge day,” said Shiosaki, who stood in the wings as the vote was taken and joined Murray on the floor after the results were announced.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The law survived a referendum challenge at the polls and went into effect that December. Shiosaki and Murray were among the state’s most prominent same-sex couples, but they weren’t among the first to get married, scheduling it instead for the anniversary of their meeting 22 years earlier, which fell on a Saturday last year. It also fell in the middle of the Seattle mayoral campaign, four days after the primary that had narrowed the field to Murray and incumbent Mike McGinn.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">His parents walked him down the aisle. “They have always been wonderfully supportive,” he said. “After a little bump in the road (when he told them he was gay) they quickly got there.”</span></p><h3 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 21px 0px 7px; overflow: visible !important;"><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">‘Quintessential Seattle couple’</span></font></h3><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sandeep Kaushik, a Seattle political consultant who worked on the Murray campaign, called Shiosaki “our secret weapon” in the race. Whenever he could make it to a political event, people gathered around him.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“He’s quiet, a calming presence, but people connect with Michael,” Kaushik said. “The two of them together just seemed like a quintessential Seattle couple – gay, straight, it made no difference.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seattle is a progressive city that has long been supportive of gay rights, Bakan said, but that wasn’t the only factor in the race. As a longtime legislator from one of the city’s key districts, Murray was a politician also known for tackling tough issues like transportation and budgets. But having a mayor with a same-sex spouse elected in a major American city was “icing on the cake,” he said.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seattle and Houston are the only two U.S. cities with a mayor married to a same-sex spouse.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With his parents aging, Shiosaki said he was back in the Spokane area about every other month during the last couple of years until just recently, when they relocated to a senior living facility in Seattle. He still has a handful of high school friends he sees there, but “for the most part, I’m pretty incognito.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The first year of Murray’s term has been marked with some big political stories: selecting a new police chief and pushing for police reform; a compromise over a $15-an-hour minimum wage; and the fight between taxi companies and Internet-based driving services like Uber. Murray was able to use skills like building coalitions he developed from years in the Legislature, but Shiosaki believes city politics are more personal than legislative politics.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“The local stuff is what people touch and feel,” he said, adding he and Murray don’t always agree on issues. “Growing up in Spokane, I do have a more conservative streak than Ed.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mayor Ed Murray, right, and husband Michael Shiosaki join other city officials and supporters to celebrate the passing of Proposition 1 on Aug. 5 at The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle. Prop. 1 created the Seattle Park District, a metropolitan district with the same boundaries as the city.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><img src="cid:B099340B-25EA-42B4-B520-C656CAD24D94" alt="0905_shiosaki3_t1240.jpg" id="B099340B-25EA-42B4-B520-C656CAD24D94" width="640" height="427"></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">--------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>