PORTLAND, Maine - Voters on Tuesday repealed the state's same sex
marriage law after an emotionally charged campaign that drew large
numbers to the polls and focused national attention on Maine.
With 87 percent of precincts reporting, the campaign to overturn
Maine's same-sex marriage law won with 53 percent of the vote vs. 47
percent opposed to Question 1, according to unofficial results compiled
by the Bangor Daily News.
Gay-marriage opponents claimed victory shortly after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Less than a week before Maine voters decide whether to repeal the state's new same-sex marriage law, donations and volunteers are pouring in to sway what both sides call a nationally significant fight.
WASHINGTON - Tens of thousands of gay rights supporters marched Sunday from the White House to the Capitol, demanding that President Barack Obama keep his promises to allow gays to serve openly in the military and work to end discrimination against gays.
Thirty years after gay rights activists staged their first national march in Washington - and coinciding with National Coming Out Day - activists return this weekend to demand federal action.
The October 11 event is a call for congress to act on gay and lesbian legislation, much of which were debated during the first 1979 march.
"We need congressional action," Cleve Jones, long-time gay activist and creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, said in a recent interview.
In 1996, when Barack Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, he was
asked in a survey by Outlines, a gay community newspaper in
Chicago, if he supported same-sex marriage. Unlike most candidates, who
merely indicated yes or no, Obama took the unusual step of typing in his
response, to which he affixed his signature. Back then not a single
state permitted same-sex marriage, and sodomy was a crime.
It’s that time of year when queers hold barbecues and parades,
and lift their Cosmopolitans to the dykes and drag queens that helped
start the modern LGBT movement. Our institutions honor an activist or
two, usually a jovial sort that won’t offend any of their funders, and
point to Barney Frank, Ellen, Rachel Maddow, queers marrying in
Massachusetts, and then declare, “Yes, we’ve come a long way.”
Here's a fun
thing to do to calm your frazzled, saddened nerves in the wake of the
CA Supreme Court's very unfortunate, but also merely annoying and
karmically fleeting Proposition 8 decision:
Head on down to your local high school -- hell, make it a junior
high or even an elementary -- and take yourself an informal survey. Ask
the various wary, bepimpled youth of Generation Tweet what they think
about those scary gay people getting married.
The marriage rights of Californians now fall into three categories. Heterosexual couples have access to all rights, responsibilities - and the name - of marriage. Gays and lesbians who were married between May 15 and Nov. 4 can remain so - but cannot remarry in the event of death or divorce. And all other gays and lesbians are prohibited by law from marrying the partner of their choice.
There is a word for this type of unequal treatment:
Discrimination.
THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing.
At a recent White House cocktail party, gay
leaders Joe Solmonese and Rea Carey sipped drinks in the Blue Room
and guessed which way President Obama would enter.
Suddenly, the president walked in -- right behind Carey. "I said,
'Rea, turn around,'" recalls Solmonese, head of the Human Rights
Campaign. "I physically turned her around to see the
president."
To their happy astonishment, the president didn't just quickly
shake their hands on his way to greet the 30 or so other guests
that night.
