The Bangor Daily News has an editorial today on Tuesday’s outcome for marriage equality. My favorite nugget:
Ninety years early, Maine sent mixed messages about extending voting rights to women, before finally doing so. After the Legislature strongly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1917, a people’s veto took back those voting rights. Two years later, however, Maine voters changed course and voted to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the right to vote to women.
For one side of question 1, this was about winning an election. For the other, it was about more. It was about losing a right.
Imagine putting up a right and an actual set of protections for your family to the vote of your neighbors. It’s absurd that it happens, and I’d lie if I said I am anything other than crushed that it was done to me and we lost.
I don’t doubt that we’ll win our equal rights in my lifetime, but today I’m at a loss for words to express my condolences to families who will actually suffer at this lack of fundamental equality.
The woman who misses seeing her wife on her deathbed because she doesn’t have the right paperwork or the hospital worker simply doesn’t recognize the strange legal maneuvering that was meant to protect both halves of this couple.
The child who isn’t protected when their biological parent dies and the other parent they’ve known their whole life struggles to claim this child as their own. But this isn’t about just situations involving death. It’s about the lives we lead and the way we feel about ourselves and the way that a child of a gay couple feels about his or her family.
More than that, I’m sad that bigots and those who judge me without knowing me feel their bizarre, self-righteous and often hypocritical, beliefs have been validated and approved by their neighbors. For the teenagers who took this vote to mean there is something wrong with their gay classmates. That it’s alright to insult and push around. For the teens who continue to live in fear because they just heard that the majority of Mainers don’t think they deserve the same rights as their brothers and sisters and friends.
We’ll win this. If nothing else, I’m personally more committed to that now. You better believe this issue hasn’t been put to bed, because until gay couples are allowed to commit to each other equally, we’ll commit with even more energy to ensuring our equal rights. I’m ready to do what it takes, and I know that the hundreds of thousands of voters who agree will step up again to help. Equality knows no election year and loss number 31 won’t beat the fight out of us.
Vote.
Call your friends and family who are voting No on 1 and do everything you can to get them to the polls.
Governor Baldacci has come along way. He first made progress in signing LD 1020 into law and making marriage a civil right accessible to all after opposing same sex marriage. He’s helped with get out the vote efforts, and recently appeared on Rachel Maddow. The clip is below, and he really embodies the what can happen when a fair-minded politician considers the facts.
It’s as simple as this: domestic partnerships don’t carry the same rights as civil marriage. It’s a simple fact provable by the laws of the state of Maine.
A very clear, concise closing argument for this campaign. We can’t let this lull us into a false sense of complacency. Below the video, learn more about how we can help in the last days.
Call (trainings are starting next week).
I won’t have much access to a real computer of the next few days, so please check out the “From My Reader” and Twitter feed to the right to see what I’m reading and sharing from some other sites on this final weekend before the vote.
So much for the strategy of gentler (and still dishonest) ads. The scary music and fast paced speaking in this is absurd. What’s more absurd is the amount of straight up lying and distortion. Disgusting, but I think the bipolar nature of the last two ads will undercut the effectiveness of either.
And for recap–the Jekyll to their Hyde.
The WMTW/Portland Press Herald debate on question 1 today had some really revealing moments. None so much as the reaction of each side to the question of what happens should they lose on Nov. 3rd. Brian Souchet’s is a cold statement of fact about policy. Mary Bonauto’s is about real people’s lives. I think we see which side is fighting for something that actually impacts the lives of committed couples and their children.
Watch:
The full video of the debate is available at UniteTheFight.org.
A slide show is at the Portland Press Herald website.
An image from a Rev. Emrich event today for Stand for Marriage Maine (Bangor Daily News has the full story):
BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE People listen to Pastor Bob Emrich during a Yes on 1 event in Brewer Tuesday evening. Seventeen people attended the event.
