Archive for Washington category
What We Can Gain From NJ Senate’s Vote Against Civil Rights
The civil rights movement has seen some remarkable losses in the last few months. In early November, voters overturned a marriage law in Maine. A month later, the New York Senate voted against civil rights in marriage. Then yesterday, after a brief period of debate, the New Jersey Senate voted against a similar civil rights bill. David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement was good enough to put some of the speeches online. Below are four of them.
And so to the question: What can we gain from this experience? I think we can use this failure (theirs, not ours) as an opportunity to reconsider our strategy.
We need to remember that we never chose this war. Remember, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) came about 14 years ago because the Hawaii Supreme Court ordered that the state must show compelling reasons to exclude lesbians and gays from marriage. Anti-gay forces recognized the repercussions if that battle didn’t go their way, so they got DOMA passed to preempt a potential loss.
Then they got busy on individual states. In every single case (someone correct me if I’m wrong), the Religious Right pushed us into a marriage battle, most notably in 2004 under the direction of twice-divorced Karl Rove. Now Maggie Gallagher uses lies to continue their assault on civil rights.
Understand, even if civil rights were to win at the ballot box, you can bet they would be ready to drop another load of lies that we would waste another couple million dollars defending against, and then we’d lose. Again, that’s not because we’re doing something wrong, but because bigotry and fear are easy sells, especially when the opponent has no relationship with the truth.
My point is that we’ve been on the defense from the start. That’s a losing plan. After 31 popular votes and I-don’t-know-how-many state legislature votes, it’s time to start playing offense.
And that’s not the only reason.
The biggest problem is that when the votes from the legislature or the people are counted up we’ve still encouraged either the legislature or the people to vote on someone’s rights, regardless of who wins. That’s not just unethical, it’s downright Unamerican.
You know what I’d really like to see? The next time the question goes to the public, we make one ad, not telling people to vote for us, but telling them not to vote on the issue at all. We should acknowledge up front that we anticipate a loss but have made that sacrifice in favor of the greater constitutional principle. Then we take the millions we would have spent on a losing campaign and give it to the homeless or some other worthy cause.
In other words, stop playing the game. Opt out.
I think we win something if we opt out of their battle and lose. We’re 0-31 in the popular vote, and the last one in Maine was lost by a nearly perfectly run campaign. We will continue to lose that battle regardless of what we do, so why not turn that energy toward a different battle, one of our choosing?
We should pour some money and effort into finding the best attorneys to fight the best court cases, like the upcoming challenge to Prop 8 (more on that later) and the case being brought by Lambda Legal and Garden State Equality against yesterday’s decision in the New Jersey Senate.
In the end, that’s where we’ll win.
I Quit: 2009 Election Wrap Up
Posted by Matt in Christianity, ENDA, Maine, Marriage, News, Politics, Washington on November 4th, 2009
So how about that election? Let’s throw the results up and see how it shook out.
WIN! The trans-inclusive anti-discrimination ordinance in Kalamazoo, Michigan passed by a landslide 24 point margin. An exceptional cap to the campaign that saw our opposition predictably return to public bathroom fear-mongering. Kudos to Kalamazoo for seeing past the nonsense! (photo from mlive.com)- WIN! According to Chuck Wolfe, 50 of the 79 openly gay political candidates endorsed by the Victory Fund in 2009 have been elected. That’s 50 City Councilmembers, School Board members, Commissioners, and Mayors elected across America, in most cases with their gender preference used as a weapon.
- WIN! (Well, probably.) Washington’s Referendum 71, which approves the Everything-But-Marriage Law passed in May. There are still a few hundred thousand absentee ballots to be counted, a process that may not be completed for several days. The current (Wednesday 3:00 pm PST) count is 51%-49% for passage. We have reason to be hopeful, as election officials have revealed that the majority of uncounted votes are from counties that generally supported the referendum. So tentatively, congratulations to Washington for letting lesbians and gay men get everything except get married.
- LOSS! A major losses for the feminist and LGBT communities in the Virginia gubernatorial election. Liberty University graduate Bob McDonnell handily defeated his opponent, even after his amazingly anti-woman and anti-gay master’s thesis was uncovered. In 1989 he wrote that, “…when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter.” As others (even FOX, for goodness’ sake) have pointed out, McDonnell’s thesis is a blueprint for his record so far as an elected official. LGBT people (and women) in Virginia, be on your guard!
LOSS! In the greatest loss of the night, Maine voters stripped their lesbian and gay neighbors of their marriage rights. With 98% of votes counted, Maine’s Question One passed by 53% – 47%. Once again the majority has decided that the minority group doesn’t deserve the same rights they enjoy. The Yes on One campaign, funded and directed largely by the Catholic Church (probably with help from the Mormons), ran a campaign centered almost completely around lies, fear-mongering, and more lies. Their television ads focused almost exclusively on statements that state officials and legal experts directly disputed. More details (and photo at right) from Rex Wockner.
We had some good results, but when you ask people if lesbian and gay relationships should be treated like theirs, the answer is still a resounding NO. Even when the Washington legislature passed a law that complied with bigoted requirements, we can barely eek out a majority vote.
And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of getting excited when a state legislature takes an unconstitutional vote that works out in our favor, and I’m tired of being disappointed when the populace takes an unconstitutional vote that reinforces systemic bigotry. I’m tired of acting like this incremental approach is reasonable anymore.
So I quit. No longer will I work for piece-meal measures and popular votes. It’s wrong, it’s unnecessary, and it allows our enemy to choose the battlefield.
I don’t completely deride incrementalism, by the way. It was a good and necessary part of the national strategy from 1996 through 2006 when we had a hostile president (first Clinton, then GWB) and a hostile congress. Our community kept hope alive for a decade with work on more local levels until we could get theoretically sympathetic majorities.
But now we have those majorities in congress, and we have a theoretically fierce advocate in the White House. The time for the confusing patchwork of laws that change every time we cross the county line is over.
It’s quite possible that a marriage law will be passed by year’s end in Washington, DC, and there’s talk of that possibility in of that happening through special sessions in New York and New Jersey, but you won’t find news of them here. If the fag hag and her closet case from NOM want to go at it on a national level, then fine. Otherwise, I’m not interested.
Either we’re fully equal or we’re not. Either the 14th amendment protects us or it doesn’t. I say we are, and I say it does.
What say you?
American Hero Fought at Omaha Beach for Equality of ALL People
This video has been bouncing across the gay interwebs at lightning speed this morning, as goddamn well it should. It’s from a Maine Senate Committee hearing in April before the Maine legislature voted to recognize equality in marriage.
I dare you not to cry.
We have two weeks left to fight before the people of Maine and Washington vote. Donate to Maine’s No on One campaign here and Washington’s Approve Referendum 71 here.
(transcript for posterity and search engines. I’ve made a few minor adjustments where Mr. Spooner misread; I’m fairly certain they’re correct.)
PHILIP SPOONER, SR: Good morning, committee. My name is Phillip Spooner and I live at [redacted] in Biddeford. I am 86 years old, a lifetime Republican, and an active VFW chaplain. I still serve three hospitals and two nursing homes, and I also served meals on wheels for twenty years. My wife of 54 years, Jenny, died in 1997. Together we had four children, including one gay son. All four of our boys were in the service.
I was born on a potato farm north of Caribou and Perham, where I was raised to believe that all men are created equal, and I’ve never forgotten that. I served in the US Army 1940-1945 in the First Army as a medic and an ambulance driver. I worked with every outfit over there including Patton’s Third Army. I saw action in all five major battles in Europe including the Battle of the Bulge. My unit was awarded Presidential Citations for transporting more patients with fewer accidents than any other ambulance unit in Europe, and I was in the liberation of Paris. After the war, I carried POWs back from Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and also hauled hundreds of injured Germans back to Germany.
I’m here today because of a conversation I had last year when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, “Do you believe in equality for gay and lesbian people?” I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that; it made no sense to me.
Finally I asked her, “What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?” I have seen so much blood and guts, so much suffering, so much sacrifice. For what? For freedom and equality. These are the values that make America a great nation, one worth dying for.
I give talks to eighth grade teachers about World War II, and I don’t tell them about the horror. Maybe I have to invite them to the ovens at Buchenwald and Dachau. I’ve seen with my own eyes the consequences of caste systems, and it makes some people less than others, or second class.
Never again. We must have equal rights for everyone; it’s what this country was started for. It takes all kinds of people to make a world. It doesn’t make sense that some people who love each other can marry and others can’t, just because of who they are. This is what we fought for in World War II, that idea that we can be different and still be equal.
My wife and I did not raise four sons with the idea that three of them would have a certain set of rights, but our gay child would be left out. We raised them all to be hard-working, proud, and loyal Americans, and they all did good.
I think if two adults who love each other want to get married, they should be able to. Everybody’s supposed to be equal in this country. Let gay people have the right to marry.
Thank you.
Maine and Washington LGBTs Need Our Help
Posted by Matt in Christianity, DOMA, Maine, Marriage, Politics, Washington on October 13th, 2009
I’ll have some closing thoughts on last weekend’s National Equality March in the next day or so, but I wanted to get this post up now before it’s too late.
This year we’ve celebrated an unprecedented advance of The Homosexual Agenda © (that is, equal rights under the Constitution). Five states now recognize our right to civil marriage, four more than just last year. But two of those states are still under attack by ever-funded, never-say-die anti-gay forces that want to end new laws that recognize our rights and equality.
In Maine, the vote on a “People’s Veto” is on November’s ballot. A vote to repeal the law, signed by Governor Balduacci in May, will be held on November 3rd. Here is the most recent campaign ad from Protect Maine Equality.
Meanwhile, Washington’s new “Everything But Marriage” law is under attack. Even though this law specifically excludes the word “marriage”, the anti-gay forces that demanded that exclusion still aren’t satisfied. Their vote will be taken, also November 3rd, to strike this new law from the books. Washington Families Standing Together (WFST) recently released this ad.
As you could probably have guessed, anti-gay forces have used ridiculously unethical tactics to get out the anti-gay vote. They’ve hidden donor names, laundered funds, lied to the general public about the effect of the laws. Maine’s Catholic churches have passed the plate multiple times for a “special offering” during Mass, intimidating parishioners into giving to the anti-gay campaigns. The state of Maine has even agreed to pursue ethics violation claims made against Stand For Marriage Maine/National Organization for Marriage.
So Maine and Washington LGBTs need our help.
I’m asking you to help keep Protect Maine Equality and WFST ads on the air. Donate to Maine’s No on One campaign here and Washington’s Approve Referendum 71 here. Ten bucks each. That’s all I ask.
We have three weeks left in these battles. Let’s make them count.
WA Governor Chris Gregoire Signs Everything-But-Marriage into Law
Note 7/26/09: I noticed that this post got linked to at a message board as proof that the battle for equality is finished in Washington. I want to stress that this blogger disagrees completely with that opinion. As I said in a previous post re: the Washington law, according to the US Supreme Court, ‘Separate but Equal’ is inherently unequal. This law is a step, not the final destination. Thanks for stopping by, and please check out the rest of my awesome better-than-anybody-else blog!
Encouraging news today from the Seattle Times:
Surrounded by about 300 people — most of them gay and lesbians couples and their children — Gov. Chris Gregoire on Monday signed legislation giving registered same-sex domestic partners all the rights and benefits that Washington now offers married couples.
The law will take effect on July 26 unless opponents seeking to repeal it can successfully collect enough signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot. A network of conservative and religious organizations, led by the Faith and Freedom Foundation, plans to begin immediately collecting signatures to repeal the measure under Referendum 71.
They have until July 25 to collect 120,577. If they are successful, the law would be suspended until voters decide the referendum. Several gay-rights advocates have established a campaign called Decline 2 Sign, to raised money in an attempt to defeat the measure.
The Monday morning bill signing by Gregoire at the Montlake Community Center was a festive event, marking a significant milestone for the state’s same-sex couples. It expands on previous domestic partnership laws by adding such partnerships to all remaining areas of state law that now only address married couples.
Governor Gregoire approves the domestic partner law
The measure also extends coverage to unmarried heterosexual couples over the age of 62.
As of Monday, there were 5,395 registered domestic partners, representing every county in the state.
The signing came almost three years after the state Supreme Court ruled against 11 gay and lesbian couples seeking the right to marry in Washington and upheld the state’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that limits marriage to one man and one woman.
Charlene Strong, a Seattle woman who was instrumental in the initial push for changes in the law after her partner drowned in the flooded basement of their Madison Valley home, said while she is thrilled with the advancements, she’s eager for the next step: reversal of DOMA.
“It is important for us to sit and talk to those who oppose us,” Strong said. “We need them to hear us, to meet our families… .”They speak from a place of fear. We need them to speak from a place of understanding.”
I agree with Ms. Strong. This is a big step, but it isn’t the last step. For today, congratulations to the folks in Washington. Their hard work will pay off for all of us.
(Incidentally, check out the comments in the article. They hit all the talking points in the first 20 minutes on this one.)
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Washington category.
That's how many LGBT students heard derogatory remarks "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school.
Here's how you can help.