Two states on different sides of the country are reporting very different news on the same-sex marriage front.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Anti-gay marriage activists have successfully gathered enough petitions to place a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the 2008 ballot, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

The question, which has been three years in the making, seeks to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. The text of the amendment reads that “no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”

The effort was organized by the group Florida4Marriage.org, who collected 649,346 signatures, Florida’s Secretary of State reported.

On the West Coast, however, a federal judge has ruled that a state law allowing gay couples to register as domestic partners is indeed valid, according to the Associated Press.

The law’s enactment was delayed by a petition requesting the law be referred to the November ballot. Fortunately, the petition fell 96 signatures short of the 55,179 required by law. U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman ruled that the petition’s disqualified signatures were handled properly.

Although the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund plans to appeal Mosman’s ruling, the state has already announced that domestic partnership applications are available online.