Why it matters: "partner" vs "spouse"

This is a great description of why civil unions/domestic partnerships just aren't the same. Yes, the word matters. That's why Referendum 74 in WA matters and why Prop8 matters.

 "[T]here is a world of difference between calling someone your ‘partner’ and calling them your ‘husband’. ‘Partner’ is a word that should be preserved for people you play tennis with, or work alongside in business. It doesn’t come close to describing the love that I have for David, and he for me. In contrast, ‘husband’ does. A ‘husband’ is somebody that you cherish forever, that you would give up everything for, that you love in sickness and in health. Until the law recognises David Furnish is my husband, and not merely my partner, the law won’t describe the man I know and adore." - Elton John

Voices of Faith Speak Out: Seattle BIshop calls for marriage equality

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Voices of Faith

SeattlePI points us to comments by the Rt Rev Greg Rickel, Episcopal Bishop of Olympia (western Washington state).

 Legalizing same-sex marriage is “a conservative proposal” consistent with basic Christian teaching and the Christian life, Episcopal Bishop Greg Rickel argues in a statement to be released on Thursday.

....

“Christianity has held, when considering relationships of all sorts — but especially in relation to two people in marriage — fidelity to be our value,” Bishop Rickel writes. “Fidelity is the value in most all our sacraments, and also in our life as Christians.”

“It seems to me we have held our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in a Catch-22. We say they cannot live up to our value because they cannot be married, or even blessed in their union. While many of them have begged for this, it is still not possible.”

“If one would think about this carefully, it would be clear what they ask of us, the church and their government, is to put boundaries around their relationship, to hold them in the same regard and with the same respect, which would also mean that we expect the same from them, as any loving heterosexual couple.”
....

“They (gays and lesbians) are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for equal treatment. They are asking to be accountable, as a couple, in community. To me, this is a conservative proposal.”

“I am for it, and I hope we will finally make way for this to happen, not only in our society, but also in our church.”

Three states — Washington, Maryland and Maine — are voting on same-sex marriage this November.

A fourth state, Minnesota, will vote on a contrary measure — heavily supported by Catholic bishops — that would enshrine a definition of marriage as between a man and a woman into the state constitution.

In Washington, polls have shown support for Referendum 74 hovering at 50 percent of the vote.

GLBT cases in front of the SCOTUS, 1

We're all anxiously waiting progress on the Prop8 federal case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which at the moment is awaiting a series of legal maneuvers because the bad guys (the defendent-interveners, who are defending Prop8) want campaign documents from groups who opposed the initiative, even though those groups are not parties to this suit. This case will eventually be decided by Judge Vaughn Walker in US District Court, and then almost certainly will be appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. After that, it may get to the SCOTUS, depending on if it is appealed there, and whether SCOTUS chooses to hear it. So there is a long, long way to go.

As that wends its way through the legal arcana, there are two other cases affecting our rights that are already on their way to the Supreme Court. I'll discuss them in turn.

The first is Doe #1 v Reed in which arguments are scheduled for Monday, 19th April. That's Doe, as in John Doe: an anonymous! We have talked extensively here about the new right-wing anti-equality meme, that it's THEY who are the victims of those EEEEEvvvvvviiiiillll rampaging homos. This appears to be based entirely on a few incidents post-Prop8, and the mean things said about them in the papers and on the internet. Most of the incidents are completely unsubstantiated, and moreover, they conveniently ignore substantiated incidents where the conservatives attacked GLBT supporters.

In the wake of California Prop8, a web site was published that contained all the donor information from the pro-H8 side. (The information from BOTH sides was published by the state and freely searchable). This led to howls of outrage from the right, and fears that they would be attacked. And you know what happened? Absolutely nothing! That's right, no one was firebombed for being a donor. Oh, I'm sure some words may have been exchanged, but there was no evidence of violence.

Still, pointing at this, the supporters of referendum 71 in Washington State (which wanted to overturn domestic partnerships--remember this next time They claim it's only about marriage) have filed suit to prevent the release of the names of those who signed the petition to put its intolerance on the ballot,

Washington's laws, like California's, have transparency rules that require the release of names. So this is nothing special. But Their Side claims they fear intimidation. There's again absolutely NO evidence that this has or would occur.

Our side has two major arguments, I think. First, there were widespread accusations of signature violations on the petitions, in which signatures were invalid, or obtained under false pretenses. It seems to me that the rule of open government works on the side of release, here. Petitioners had no expectation of privacy and there is a legitimate public interest in seeing those names.

Second, we do not allow people to wear hoods and attack the rights of others. If you are ashamed of what you are doing, you are doing the wrong thing.

The problem for Our Side is that this Supreme Court has already bought into the intimidation argument EVEN THOUGH there is no evidence for it. As Chris Geidner reports,

The broad issue — the intimidation question — already has arisen twice in recent months at the Court, when the Court rejected the attempt to allow a live-streaming of the Proposition 8 trial to other courtrooms and in Justice Thomas’s opinion in Citizens United.

. That's the stunning case in which the court ruled corporations are people and can spend freely to influence elections.

I have just about lost any respect for Justice Thomas, but I really expected better of Justice Kennedy who is generally the swing vote between the sensible liberal side and the reactionary conservative bloc.

So although it seems obvious to me that Doe should be decided in a way that maintains an open government, I greatly fear that the current Supreme Court will decide in favor of secret cabals and blackballing.

More on Referendum 71: secret signatures

From Pam's House Blend, more about Referendum 71. Remember, if enough signatures were gathered (which is questionable), it will put a referendum on the ballot asking the voters to approve the expanded domestic partnerships bill.

We must VOTE "APPROVE" to preserve the Domestic Partnership Expansion Law of 2009 (SB 5688).  Yes, I said APPROVE.  This is due to the way the ballot was worded by the Attorney General:
REFERENDUM 71
Ballot Title
Statement of Subject: The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].
Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.
Should this bill be:
Approved __X__
Rejected ___
......

There has been some misinformation that if we don't vote APPROVED, the entire DP system will be repealed.  This is false.  Referendum 71 is about approving an incremental enhancement to existing DP law.  Existing DP law will remain intact no matter what.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Not surprisingly, the opposition are trying agin to hide their hatred under the cloak of anonymity. They tried the same thing in CA, and were fortunately thwarted. Despite their claims that PropH8 supporters would be harrassed, they weren't. And if we're talking harassment, howabout the ultimate harassment of denying a citizen their right to marry, or the right to protect their family? Remember just WHO the real victims are here!

Democracy only works in the sunlight. Or as my mother would say, if you are ashamed to be known for doing something, that is a clue that perhaps you shouldn't have done it.

Another reason for secrecy may be the reports that the signature-gatherers lied about the petitions, and claimed that signing them actually supported GLBT rights (Again, from Pam' House Blend. They may not want to have people who support GBLT rights finding out their signatures were collected under false pretenses. A version of this also happened in CA where marriage equality opponents would show up to pro-equality rallies and tell people to vote YES on PropH8 if they supported gay rights.

Finally, the referendum supporters stand to make money off the sale of those names and addresses to political campaigns, etc etc, if they aren't public. There's a simple explanation for their claims of victimhood. It starts with G and it ends with D and it spells GREED.

This leads me to wonder at the values and integrity of a movement that is based so heavily on lies and misleading people. If they don't have sufficient confidence in the rightness of their cause so that they have to lie about it, what does that tell us?

Out of state Hate

Poor Maine is suffering the indignity of a ballot referendum on gay marriage. Can you say, Proposition 8? All the usual suspects have been arriving: the Knights of Columbus, the Mormons, Maggie Gallagher's NOM group (of the Scary Video), and the Roman Catholic church.

The Sun Journal reports,

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland contributed $100,000, the Knights of Columbus of Washington, D.C., chipped in $50,000 and Focus on the Family, a Christian group based in Colorado Springs, Colo., donated $31,000 to the political action committee seeking to repeal the gay marriage law.

Nearly half of the group's fundraising, $160,000, came from the National Organization for Marriage, a New Jersey-based group.

However, quite interestingly, the paper also reports that

The campaign finance report also shows four Maine citizens contributed a total of $400 to the cause.

Four people from the state in question donated $400 of the $340,000 the haters have raised. Four people! By contrast,

Maine Freedom to Marry, the group campaigning to maintain the law, raised a total of about $138,000 from more than 350 donors during the same period, according to a release.

Donations from Mainers totaled about $80,000, with the remaining $58,000 coming from out of state.

So, Mainers themselves support marriage equality by a ratio of 350:4.

We saw this in California, when a flood of donations from out of state drove the Prop8 campaign to record expenditures. The Roman Catholic bishops provided political cover for the Mormons, and the conservative Catholic group the Knights of Columbus poured money into the state. Coupled with failures on the "No" side to mobilize and do outreach, this proved lethal. The final insult was the triumphalism of the SF and LA Archbishops in telling the gay community to shut up. So, the same thing in Maine so far....let's hope we can block that triumphalism thing and instead see a chastened statement of defeat.

An interesting question is where the Roman Catholic church gets all that money. Seems that RC in Maine has been in financial straits, closing down parishes. As the Sun Journal reported in a different article,

In the face of recent firings at the Trinity Catholic School and the plans for closing two Catholic parishes in Lewiston, both due to declining revenue, the revelation that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland had spent $100,000 on efforts to repeal the recently passed same-sex marriage law took some Catholics by surprise.

"I saw that $100,000 figure in the paper and it was very demoralizing," said David Webbert, an Augusta lawyer, who for years attended Auburn's St. Philip's Church with his family and now occasionally attends in Winthrop.

Remarkably, in an economic climate of joblessness and need, the Roman Catholic church in Maine can't keep churches open and can't help the poor, but it can sure attack the civil (not religious, but CIVIL) marriages of Mainers at great cost.

But as we've seen in Washington state, it's not about Marriage per se. It's about denying gay citizens any secular rights at all. And that, dear friends, is nothing more than hate.

Support Equality Maine.

Uh-oh. Another mob vote attacking marriage coming up!

The Huffington Post reports,

In Maine, the Stand for Marriage Maine coalition said it took only four weeks to gather more than the 55,087 signatures necessary to put gay marriage to a vote.

The Maine law to legalize gay marriage had been scheduled to go into effect Sept. 12. It will be put on hold after the signatures are submitted and certified by the secretary of state's office. Voters will then decide in November whether the law should stand.

Prepare yourselves, for the hatred, the bigotry, the lies and the ire. They have hate on their side. We have only love.

Go give Equality Maine some love. They're going to need it.


Update: Irony alert. Apparently the opponents of gay marriage in Maine are painting themselves as a poor harassed minority and are hiding their HQ from marauding bands of queers.

But by complaining loudly and often that they've been called names and heard things go bump in the night since they launched their campaign, might Stand for Marriage Maine's organizers also be portraying themselves as an oppressed "minority" (Mutty's word, not mine) in the hope that they will be perceived as the victims this time around?....

Maybe not, but Stand for Marriage Maine's secretive ways contrast sharply with the see-through strategy of the Maine Freedom to Marry coalition.....

Those who are trying to overturn Maine's same-sex marriage law are learning – many for the first time – how frightening it can be when someone gets in your face or dials your home phone out of the blue and calls you a nasty name.

At the same time, those who are defending the law are learning – many for the first time – that the more the social pendulum swings their way here in Maine and beyond, the less they need to live in fear.

Update 2: Americablog reports that the usual suspects (The Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus, NOM, and Focus on the Family have contributed quite a lot. Our side is lagging behind. HRC, other national orgs, where are you?

The first campaign finance report in the Maine marriage campaign came out today. The Diocese of Portland, which has been shutting down parishes for lack of money, contributed $100,000. The Knights of Columbus chipped in $50,000. And the National Organization for Marriage donated $160,000 (and we really don't know who gave NOM that money, but we suspect some bigots based in Salt Lake City.) In a separate report, Focus on the Family Maine Marriage Committee reported raising $42,000 for the campaign to take marriage rights away.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Our side will report raising around $138,000.

Dear Maine

Dear Maine,
I hear that you have joined the ranks of the enlightened in the Northeast, and got yourselves a great new gay marriage law, passed by the legislature! I'm sure you are especially proud of your governor John Baldacci, who said,

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

“Article I in the Maine Constitution states that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protection of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person’s civil rights or be discriminated against.’”

“This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs. It does not require the church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. Instead, it reaffirms the separation of Church and State. It guarantees that Maine citizens will be treated equally under Maine’s civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of government."

Way to go, Maine!

Unfortunately, I hear that your law allows those opposed to collect signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in an attempt to overturn this. Oh, be very careful, Maine.

Because you will be assaulted in parking lots and shopping malls, as professional signature collectors harass you. At churches, signature-getters will chase congregants across the parking lot insisting they sign, even if they don't want to. They may tell you that you are signing something completely different, or that you are signing to SUPPORT gay marriage.

And if the referendum gets on the ballot, it's just beginning. Because out-of-state money, and out-of-state Hate, will pour into your state.

You will get angry advertisements that are full of lies and more lies, and if those don't work, there will be threats and vandalism.

And, Maine? Regardless of the outcome of the election, there will be anger and deep bitterness and injury that will not heal easily. And your civic, civil discourse will be deeply damaged for a long time to come. People will stop speaking to each other. Work relationships will degrade. Neighbors will shun one another. Long after the election, people will flip each other off on the freeway and wariness and anger will simmer for a long time.

Think hard, Maine. The legistlature did their job. So did the governor. Be proud, and decline to sign.

Love, California

(Keep track at Equality Maine.)