Seconds before midnight on Dec. 6, 2012, at the front of a 200-couple queue curled around King County’s administration building, Pete-e Petersen and Jane Abbott Lighty faced what felt like their final closed door.

The West Seattle couple had spent 35 years breaking barriers before that chilly night in downtown Seattle.

Petersen and Lighty raised a daughter, led successful careers and built a life together when same-sex relationships were not only taboo, but in some ways illegal. They came out in the late 1990s and became two of the state’s fiercest gay rights advocates, helping found Seattle Women’s Chorus and appearing in TV advertisements pushing for marriage equality in Washington.

So when the door before them opened, it was fitting that Petersen and Lighty — then 85 and 77 — were fi

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