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LA
votes to ban ALL
marriage-related protections!
Friends,
Well,
the biggest thing since my last update happened not in MA, but in
Louisiana. The people of LA voted to amend their
constitution to ban the legal protections of both marriage and
civil unions to gay couples.
I
can't believe that things like this are still happening in this
day and age. Over in Spain, the entire country is about to
start performing same-sex marriages, but over here we are writing
discrimination into our country's structures for law.
10 more states will vote on similar measures this year.
This
isn't the only setback since my last update either. A Texas
judge is taking away a man's house now that his partner has passed
away and Jimmy Swaggart actually threatened to kill gay men!
You can more below.
Notable
items this week:
La.
Voters Approve Same-Sex Marriage Ban
NEW
ORLEANS, Sept. 18 -- Louisiana voters overwhelmingly
approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex
marriages and civil unions, one of as many as 12 such
measures on state ballots this year.
Christian conservatives had conducted an intense grass-roots
lobbying campaign for the amendment. Gene Mills of the
Louisiana Family Forum outlined a statewide effort relying
on word of mouth, meetings with pastors and some
advertising.
Full
Story
Texas
Judge: No Rights For Gay Couples
HOUSTON,
TX: A man fighting to keep the home he shared with his late
partner is looking for a new place to live after a Harris
County court ruled that same-sex partners have no rights.
William Ross says he and John Green, who died in January
2003, were partners for 71/2 years.
Full
Story
Angry Gays Seek Role in Presidential Vote
Gay Activists Say They Could Make Difference in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio
By Adam Tanner, Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Sept. 20) - President Bush's support for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage delighted many conservatives but alienated a smaller but potentially important voting bloc in a tight election.
"The final breaking point was when the president announced his support for that amendment," said John Farina, a longtime Ohio Republican activist who left the party in February. "That was enough to finally say, 'OK, the Republican Party is moving in the wrong direction."'
In a time of war in Iraq and economic uncertainty at home, will resentment from gay voters such as Farina affect the November election, especially in states such as Florida, where only a few hundred votes decided the 2000 election?
Gay activists say they could make a key difference in close contests in states such as Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio in the presidential race between Bush and Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry.
"We're talking about a few thousand votes that could decide this election," said Chrissy Gephardt, the gay daughter of Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, a former Democratic presidential candidate. She is traveling the country to mobilize gay voters for the party.
"Given how close these elections have been -- look at Florida in 2000, even the state of Pennsylvania, it's so close -- for gay and lesbian voters to come out makes a huge difference," she said. The 2000 presidential race was finally decided for Bush when he won Florida by 537 of the nearly 6 million votes cast.
The Bush campaign plays down the issue, saying terrorism and the economy should be the prime focus of the campaign.
Privately, one Bush-Cheney official said the campaign hoped the gay issue would mobilize religious conservatives who did not show up as strongly as some expected in 2000.
"Say you lose a thousand voters over the gay issue, you could be possibly mobilizing hundreds of thousands of voters by staying strong on this issue," the national campaign official said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set the stage for a national dust-up over gay marriage in February by suddenly allowing homosexuals to wed at City Hall, the same place where Hollywood superstar Marilyn Monroe and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio tied the knot almost exactly 50 years before.
STATES TO VOTE ON MARRIAGE BAN
Attempts to ban gay marriage are on the ballot in the November election in at least 10 states and those initiatives could boost voter turnout, both among conservatives and gays. Louisiana voters Saturday overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriages and civil unions.
The issue has led to the airing of some differences in the Republican camp. Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, who has a gay daughter, disagreed with him and declared, "People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want."
Exit polls from the 2000 presidential election found that an estimated 4 million Americans identified themselves as gay, of which only 1 million voted for Bush.
"This election, there really is a huge difference in people wanting to get involved and to get the Bush administration out," said Scott Safier, a member of Steel City Stonewall, a gay group in Pittsburgh that supports the Democratic Party.
"In San Francisco, we kind of take it for granted who people are going to vote for," Tom Whitler said in the Castro district of San Francisco, the center of the city's gay community.
Newsom says gays have already had an impact on the 2004 election by helping Democratic candidate Howard Dean early on, making strong financial contributions and influencing the debate over homosexual rights.
Newsom said in the swing states "it would be difficult to argue that the gay and lesbian vote is going to be the dominant factor."
"But I think it has played a large role nationally and it has changed the debate a little, or at least stopped the momentum for the debate that President Bush wanted to have in this country, to use the gay issue as a wedge issue," he said.
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