Amendment To Ban Marriage, Civil Unions and DPs In Iowa Introduced

Despite recent poll results showing only one-third of voters nationally support no legal recognition for same-sex couples, Republicans in Iowa have introduced a measure which would not only overturn marriage equality in that state (which has been in effect since April 2009) but also prevent any state legal recognition of same-sex couples whatsoever.

One Iowa is the group defending equal marriage rights for all Iowans. They distributed a press release:

DES MOINES – An amendment that seeks to exclude gay couples from marriage was introduced in the Iowa Statehouse today. The bill (House Joint Resolution 6) seeks to amend the Iowa Constitution to exclude gay and lesbian couples from the freedom to marry. If passed through the legislature in two consecutive General Assemblies, the issue could be on the ballot as soon as 2013.

“Amending the Iowa Constitution to exclude gay couples will harm thousands of Iowa families,” said One Iowa Executive Director Carolyn Jenison. “Marriage says ‘we’re a family’ like nothing else and is an important way we care for those we love. Writing discrimination into the Constitution will only divide us at a time when we need to work together to tackle common concerns. Iowans expect their elected officials to focus on issues that matter to everyone, like creating jobs, providing educational opportunities, and improving healthcare. Going backward on equal rights sends the wrong message.”

HJR6 goes beyond marriage, and would ban civil unions, domestic partnerships, and any other legal recognition of same-sex couples.

“This bill intends to forever strip basic protections from loving and committed gay couples,” Jenison said. “It goes against Iowa’s cherished tradition of protecting equal rights for all. Now is the time for Iowans to come together and send a clear message to their legislators that discrimination has no place in Iowa’s Constitution. Our legislators should continue to uphold Iowa’s long-held value of equal rights for all.”

One Iowa is the state’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) advocacy organization, committed to full equality for LGBT individuals, including the freedom to marry.

# # #

SCOTUS Ends NOM's Attempt To Force Vote on DC Marriage

Ha! The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to hear a challenge to a D.C. Court of Appeals ruling which prevents any ballot measure that would violate the D.C. Human Rights Act.

The result means that the National Organization for Marriage will be unable to ever eliminate D.C.'s marriage equality law. This is also an excellent affirmation of the idea that the human rights of others should not be up for a vote, a principle of law in the District of Columbia since 1979.

Chris Geidner over at PoliGlot has the call:

With no comment, the court decision (pdf) puts an end to Jackson's effort to stop the 2009 marriage equality law in D.C. Today's court action in Jackson v. D.C. Board of Elections, however, provides no precedent for elsewhere and represents no view on the merits of the request.

[...]

For D.C., though, the action puts an end to the legal questions remaining for marriage equality here.

Jackson had been appealing the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling in July upholding the decision by the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics that Jackson's proposed marriage initiative was an improper subject of an initiative.

In the July 5-4 decision, the court then held that the Human Rights Act (HRA) limitation in District law, which prohibits initiatives or referendums that would violate the HRA, is permissible. In light of that ruling, all 9 judges of the D.C. court agreed that the proposed marriage initiative would violate the HRA and is, thus, not permitted.

Calling the issue a "relatively obscure matter of law," longtime District gay rights activist [and MadProfessah friend] Bob Summersgill told Metro Weekly, "This was not about the merits of marriage, it was whether the council in 1979 had the authority to restrict initiatives and referenda from violations of the Human Rights Act."

[...]

Summersgill said that the reason for the HRA limitation is that "DC's original council was, by and large, made up of civil rights activists. They firmly believed that a human right is not something that should be subject to popular vote."

NH GOP Apparently Delaying Attempt To End Marriage Equality

New Hampshire Republicans, who possess veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature, have apparently decided not to attempt to repeal that state's marriage equality law in 2011. The Democratic Governor John Lynch signed a marriage equality bill into law June 3, 2009 which went info effect January 1, 2010. He had vowed to veto any attempt to repeal the measure. In the 2010 election the National Organization for Marriage strongly supported Lynch's opponent and supported Republican state legislative candidates.

The Associated Press reports:

"House Republican Leader D.J. Bettencourt confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday that jobs and the economy will be the top priorities on an agenda to be announced Thursday. Bettencourt says there's widespread agreement that social issues will have to take a back seat."

The New Hampshire Freedom To Marry Coalition responded:

“We are pleased again to hear the House majority leader say that gay marriage is not a priority this legislative session. Voters want their legislators to focus on the economy; they did not send people to Concord to rehash marriage equality. But we heard some wiggle room in today’s remarks, leaving the door open to bring up a repeal of marriage equality in the coming weeks. We are continuing our efforts to educate and engage all Granite Staters as planned to show that it’s not the role of government to take away rights from New Hampshire citizens and families.”

Evan Wolfson Easily Wins Marriage Debate at Economist.com

Evan Wolfson has easily won his online debate over marriage equality with the odious Maggie Gallagher over at Economist.com. MadProfessah mentioned the interesting event a few weeks ago. Over 1,000 thoughtful comments were posted from people all over the world, and the results are 63% voted in favor of the motion "This house believes gay marriage should be legal."

The Economist Hosts Online Debate On Marriage

The Economist magazine endorsed marriage equality in 1996, well before any country in the world allowed same-sex couples to possess an identical marital status to heterosexual couples. This week they are hosting an online debate on the proposition "This house believes that gay marriage should be legal" with my friend Evan Wolfson, founder and executive director of Freedom To Marry arguing in favor of the motion and Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage, opposed.

The comments are very interesting and there is an online poll (currently vastly in favor of marriage equality).

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Fight Over Ill. Civil Unions Bill Coming Next Week

Illinois is quickly becoming the site for a legislative battle royale next week over LGBT equality as the State Legislature is expected to take up Senate Bill 1617, a bill to enact civil unions (also known as comprehensive domestic partnerships).

The bill is expected to come up for a vote on Tuesday November 30th and recently elected Democratic Governor Pat Quinn has agreed to sign the measure into law.

The expected opposition to the civil rights legislation from heterosexual supremacists and religious theocrats is starting to emerge:

The head of Chicago's Roman Catholic archdiocese Monday portrayed legislation authorizing civil unions between gay and lesbian couples as an initiative that would ''change the nature of marriage'' and urged state lawmakers to reject it.

''Everyone has a right to marry, but no one has the right to change the nature of marriage,'' Cardinal Francis George said in a statement. ''Marriage is what it is and always has been, no matter what a Legislature decides to do; however, the public understanding of marriage will be negatively affected by passage of a bill that ignores the natural fact that sexual complementarity is at the core of marriage.''

Note the words "sexual complementarity" being described as a "natural fact" at the "core of marriage" by the man of faith. He is trying to combine the tautological argument against marriage equality (marriage is defined as only between a man and a woman) with the gender confusion argument ("who will be the wife?"). Of course, both of these arguments can be easily refuted by the easily discernible fact that marriage in 2010 is not based on subordination of women and that there are tens of thousands of legally married same-sex couples in the United States.

But the openly LGBT sponsors of Senate Bill1617 say it best:

The proposal, pushed by Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) and Rep. Deb Mell (D-Chicago), would grant new spousal rights to same-sex partners in a civil union, putting them on par legally with heterosexual married couples when it comes to surrogate decision-making for medical treatment, survivorship, adoptions and accident and health insurance, for example.

But Harris said the legislation does nothing to change the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, which currently is spelled out in state law.

''I'd say either he is being misinformed about the state of the law in Illinois or they're trying to make more of it than there really is,'' Harris said in response to George's statements.

A portion of Senate Bill 1716 explicitly states that the proposal is not intended to ''interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body.'' The bill goes on to state that religious bodies are ''free to choose whether or not to solemnize or officiate a civil union."

It should be interesting to see if Equality Illinois can prevail over NOM next week.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Gigantic Pew Poll Confirms Public Opinion Shift Towards Marriage Equality

More good news on the polling front for supporters of marriage equality. A new Pew Research poll of nearly 6,000(!) Americans again reveals the extent of the rapidity of the shift in public opinion towards marriage equality.

There are several points to highlight from these results, but the  main ones are:

For the first time in 15 years of Pew Research Center polling, fewer than half oppose same-sex marriage.

[..] 

There are substantial age and generational differences in opinions about same-sex marriage. Millennials, born after 1980, favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally by a 53%-to-39% margin. Support for gay marriage among Millennials has changed little in recent years, but is up from 2004 when opinion was more divided.

Among Gen Xers (born 1965 to 1980), 48% now favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally while 43% are opposed. Support is up from 2009 when 41% favored this and 50% were opposed, but is on par with levels in 2001.

There is less support for same-sex marriage among Baby Boomers -- those born 1946 to 1964 -- than among younger age groups. Currently, 38% favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally while 52% are opposed. Still, support among Baby Boomers has increased over the past year (from 32%).

The Silent Generation (born 1928 to 1945) continues to oppose same-sex marriage; just 29% favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally while 59% are opposed. Even among the Silent Generation, however, there is somewhat more support than in 2009 (23% favor) and substantially greater support than in 2003, when just 17% backed gay marriage.

[...]

Whites are now evenly divided over gay marriage; in polls conducted this year, 44% of non-Hispanic whites favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally and 46% are opposed. In three surveys between August 2008 and August 2009, 39% of non-Hispanic whites favored same-sex marriage compared with 52% who were opposed.

By contrast, blacks continue to oppose same-sex marriage by a wide margin. In 2010, just 30% of non-Hispanic blacks favor gay marriage while 59% are opposed. From 2008 to 2009, 28% of blacks favored same-sex marriage and 62% were opposed.

The sub group breakdowns are summarized in the following table.

Simpsons laugh: Ha-ha! The heterosexual supremacists must be shaking in their boots.

WATCH: Cynthia Nixon Kicks NOM Butt For Marriage Equality

At the New Yorker festival this weekend there was a panel with the odious Brian Brown of NOM, Cynthia Nixon (Miranda on Sex in the City) along with other notables like Perry v. Schwarzenegger super-lawyer David Boies making the case for and against same-sex marriage.

Nixon demolishes the argument that gay and lesbian couples who want to marry are seeking to "redefine marriage" by saying something like: "When women got the vote, it did not redefine voting. When African-Americans were able to sit at lunch counters and get served it did not redefine eating out. Opening up marriage to same-sex couples will not redefine marriage!"

Watch the video yourself to see what she said exactly.

WATCH: Stop8.org Dismantles NOM Arguments

Watch Matt Baume of Stop8.org do an excellent job of dismantling  the arguments in a National Organization for Marriage (NOM) radio ad. Baume usess NOM's own words an explains how misleading, wrong and "catty" they are.

538 Claims Marriage Equality Support Accelerating

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com has analyzed the polling on public support for marriage equality and notes that there appears to be an acceleration in the rate at which support for legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples is increasing.

Something to bear in mind is that it's only been fairly recently that gay rights groups -- and other liberals and libertarians -- shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise. While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things like court decisions -- support for gay marriage slid backward by a couple of points, albeit temporarily, after a Massachusetts' court's ruling in 2003 that same-sex marriage was required by that state's constitution -- it seems that, in general, "having the debate" is helpful to the gay marriage cause, probably because the secular justifications against it are generally quite weak.

In mathematical terms we we would say that the second derivative (the rate of the rate of increase) is positive, but you can just notice that there is an uptick in the blue graph at the end.

But no matter how you analyze it, it shows that the National Organization for Marriage will be out of business soon. Hurray!

DC High Court Rejects Marriage Referendum By 5-4 Vote

The nation's capital's highest court, the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected (by a frighteningly close) 5-4 vote an effort by the National Organization for Marriage and other heterosexual supremacists to force a vote on that jurisdiction's recently enacted marriage law.

Law Dork Chris Geidner has the best coverage:

The D.C. Court of Appeals issued its awaited decision in Bishop Harry Jackson's appeal of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics's decision that his proposed marriage initiative was an improper subject of an initiative. In a 5-4 decision, the court held that the Human Rights Act limitation in District law, which prohibits initiatives or referendums that would violation the Human Rights Act, is permissible. In light of that ruling, all 9 judges agreed that the proposed marriage initiative would violate the Human Rights Act and is, thus, not permitted.

In the absence of a successful appeal, then, D.C. marriage equality, which went into effect earlier this year, cannot be subject to an iniative.

He also quotes from the decision itself (Jackson v. D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics):

In the most important conclusion to be made by the court, it held:

The Charter amendment that established the right to initiative must be read in conjunction with the Home Rule Act, which, although conferring on the Council broad legislative authority, makes clear that the legislative authority is subject to limits implied by the United States Constitution and to the enumerated limits [set out by Congress.] Since [the section defining the initiative right in the District] obviously could not and did not remove those limits, it cannot be read as expressing the entire scope of restrictions on the initiative right. Rather, [the section] does not purport to address, and is ambiguous as to, whether there are other limitations on the right to initiative (and referendum). The Human Rights Act safeguard[, which prohibits initiatives that would violate the Human Rights Act] is not inconsistent with that ambiguous language.

Id. at 21. Four of the judges of the court disagreed with this conclusion, in an opinion written by Judge John Fisher. He was joined by Chief Judge Eric Washington and Judges Stephen Glickman and Kathryn Oberly.

It should be noted that all 9 judges agreed that the proposed marriage referendum (limiting marriage to between one man and one woman), like Proposition 8, would violate the D.C. Human Rights Act.

Suck it, NOM!

SCOTUS Rules 8-1 To Support R-71 Names Disclosure

The Supreme Court has ruled 8-1 in the case of Doe v. Reed that heterosexual supremacist petition signers in Washington who placed Referendum 71 (which would have repealed a comprehensive domestic partnership statute) on the ballot have no implicit First Amendment expectation of privacy, affirming last year's excellent 9th Circuit appellate decision.

Washington Families Standing Together, the organization that managed the campaign to defend the domestic partnership law by approving Referendum 71 issued a statement:

The Court has made clear today that public disclosure requirements are an important means of making sure measures are not put on the ballot by fraudulent means or mistake.

“Public disclosure thus helps ensure that the only signatures counted are those that should be, and that the only referenda placed on the ballot are those that garner enough valid signatures. Public disclosure also promotes transparency and accountability in the electoral process to an extent other measures cannot. In light of the foregoing, we reject plaintiffs’ argument and conclude that public disclosure of referendum petitions in general is substantially related to the important interest of preserving the integrity of the electoral process.”

This 8- 1 ruling by the highest court in the land is a significant defeat for those who have sought to enshrine discrimination into law at the ballot box. Nowhere is the integrity and transparency of elections more important than where the ballot box is being used in an attempt to take away fundamental rights. Nowhere is it more important for the public to know that attempts to affect the lives of their fellow citizens by promoting ballot measures are free from fraud and error. Perhaps no other group has witnessed its rights put up for public vote more than LGBT Americans. Social conservatives have used ballot measures in state after state, over more than 30 years, to keep LGBT Americans from being able to adopt children, to marry and even to be protected from discrimination in housing and employment.

This is the third loss for these groups in our state over the past year as they tried to repeal legislation ensuring that all families are treated equally under Washington State law. First the State PDC said no when these same groups tried to hide their donors. Then voters approved Referendum 71, retaining the law, by more than 53%. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the proponents’ attempt to undermine disclosure laws.

With regard to the assertion by the anti-gay groups that they would be harmed if petition signatures were subject to public disclosure, as Justice Stevens said in his concurring opinion,

“Any burden on speech that petitioners posit is speculative as well as indirect. For an as-applied challenge to a law such as the PRA to succeed, there would have to be a significant threat of harassment directed at those who sign the petition that cannot be mitigated by law enforcement measures.”

The Supreme Court has in the past allowed narrow exemptions to public disclosure where there’s a clear minority party that has suffered both official and societal retaliation by the majority and where there is strong evidence that such disclosure presents a serious threat. With regard to Referendum 71, however, the groups making this claim were not the minority, but to the contrary, were the ones trying to diminish the rights of the minority. They will be hard pressed to convince a judge the record here is otherwise.

In an amicus brief provided to the Supreme Court in Doe v. Reed, a group of political scientists reported that not only was the assertion of alleged harassment unsubstantiated in Washington State, but the plaintiffs did not present a single verified threat to any signer of a ballot measure petition in any state in any election. As their brief said, “More than a million names of signers of petitions for referenda and initiatives opposing gay marriage have been posted on the Internet, yet there is no evidence that any of these signers has faced any threat of retaliation or harassment by reason of that disclosure.”

WAFST applauds today’s decision and thanks all those who filed briefs and supported our collective efforts as we fought over the last year to protect the rights of all Washingtonians.

Congratulations to Washington State, this is a big loss for the heterosexual supremacist haters like National Organization for Marriage.

DC Superior Court Rejects Referendum On Marriage

Hater heterosexual supremacist lose another one! Last Thursday, a D.C. Superior Court judge ruled that opponents of same-sex marriage do not have the right to force a popular vote which could repeal the fundamental right to marry for same-sex couples in the nation's capital.

The Washington Post summarizes:

The decision, a major victory for gay rights activists, makes it more likely that the District will begin allowing same-sex couples to marry in March.

In the 23-page ruling, Judge Judith N. Macaluso affirmed a D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics decision that city law disallows the ballot proposal because it would promote discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Macaluso also concluded that previous court decisions outlawing same-sex marriage in the District are no longer valid.

[..]

The election board has twice ruled that a referendum on same-sex marriage would violate a city election law prohibiting such a vote on a matter covered by the Human Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination against gays and other minority groups.

MadProfessah has been closely following the status of the fight for marriage equality in the District of Columbia, which would become the first majority-Black jurisdiction in the United States to allow same-sex couples to marry, as well as the first state in the Southern United States to do so. Thus the vote to enact marriage equality by the DC Council made by list of the Top 10 Most Significant LGBT Events of 2009.

LawDork has uploaded the full text of the judicial decision here.

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0.

NOM and 39 U.S. Republicans Challenge DC Marriage

The National Organization for Marriage and 39 Republican Congressmen has asked the DC Superior Court to force the DC Board of Elections to place a referendum to ban gay marriage on the ballot.

In addition to U.S. Senators Roger Wicker (Miss.) and James Inhofe (Okla.), the brief was signed by House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Ohio), and U.S. Reps. Robert Aderholt (Ala.), Todd Akin (Mo.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.), J. Gresham Barrett (S.C.), Roscoe Bartlett (Md.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), John Boozman (Ark.), Jason Chaffetz (Utah), John Fleming (La.), J. Randy Forbes (Va.), Virginia Foxx (N.C.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Phil Gingrey (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), Wally Herger (Calif.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Steve King (Iowa), Jack Kingston (Ga.), John Kline (Minn.) Doug Lamborn (Colo.), Robert Latta (Ohio), Don Manzullo (Ill.), Michael McCaul (Tex.), Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), Patrick McHenry (N.C.), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Jeff Miller (Fla.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Randy Neugebauer (Tex.), Mike Pence (Ind.), Joe Pitts (Pa.), Mark Souder (Ind.) and Todd Tiahrt (Kan.)

I suspect this is not the last we will hear about this lawsuit.

NJ Senate To Vote on Marriage Equality Bill Thu 1/8

After a month of contentious debate following the 7-6 passage in the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee it has become clearer that it is unlikely there are the votes to pass a marriage equality bill through the New Jersey legislature for Governor Jon Corzine's signature before he leaves office on January 19th.

However, on Thursday January 8th the full New Jersey State Senate will vote on the measure, S1967.

"Given the intensely personal nature of this issue, I think the people of this state deserve the right to a formal debate on the Senate floor," Codey said.

With many legislators refusing to say where they stand, Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), a sponsor, said the vote forces them to "stand up and be counted on how they feel about equal rights."

"They can’t be hesitant anymore," Weinberg said. "They have to come to the realization that we were elected to take sometimes difficult stands, but we were not elected to only worry about the next election."

Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen), an opponent of the bill, said there isn’t enough support in either house to pass the measure but declined to say it would fail in the Senate.

"I have no way of getting into anybody’s head and saying how they’re going to go," Cardinale said. "Maybe they’re hoping that the debate will inflame people or that there will be folks who say outrageous things."

Senate Majority Leader and incoming Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) declined to say how he would vote, but said gay marriage supporters "have made a very strong case about civil rights — one that’s hard to ignore, to be perfectly honest with you."

Roberts said today the gay marriage divide in the Assembly is "very, very, very close," and his colleagues had been reluctant to vote on the bill only to see it go down in the Senate.

"A lot of Assembly people have said, ‘We want to support it, but we frankly want to know that it’s going to pass both houses,’" said Roberts (D-Camden). "And I think that’s a similar view in the Senate, that this has to be a reality in both houses. It’s simple mathematics."

If the bill clears the Senate, Roberts said he will post it in the full Assembly "immediately" Monday without a committee hearing, a day before leadership changes in both houses. Gov. Jon Corzine has pledged to sign it and today said "marriage equality is an idea whose time has come." Gov.-elect Chris Christie, who opposes gay marriage, takes office Jan. 19.

Keep your fingers crossed!

DC Mayor Fenty Signs Marriage Equality Bill

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty signed a bill legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples today.

Fenty signed in front of 150 activists and same-sex couples -- many of whom say they plan to marry -- in the sanctuary of All Souls Unitarian in Mount Pleasant.

"We knew this day would come," Fenty said. "I say to the world: An era of struggle ends for thousands in Washington, D.C. . . . Our city is taking a leap forward."

Before he signed the bill, Fenty spoke of his interracial upbringing, noting it was illegal for his parents to get married 40 years ago.

"This is one of the churches my parents would have brought me to when I was a boy," he said as his parents sat among advocates in a second pew.

The bill still needs to survive inaction by Congress over 30 legislative days and a federal suit by the odious National Organization for Marriage to force a public referendum to strip away newly-granted marriage rights for LGBT people (it is expressly prohibited by the DC Charter at the moment to have any public vote on a measure which would strip away a right from a minority).

LA TIMES Lambasts Evangelical Heterosexual Supremacist Screed

In Saturday's Los Angeles Times, the op-ed page published an article condemning the recently released (and widely condemned) Manhattan Declaration, a statement signed by more than a hundred evangelicals which explicitly, almost violently, anti-gay.

Last week, a group of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders released a “declaration” reminding fellow believers that "Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required." Then, after a specious invocation of King, the 152 signers hurl this anathema at those who would enact laws protecting abortion or extending the rights of civil (not religious) marriage to same-sex couples:

"Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality. . . . We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."

Strong words, but also irresponsible and dangerous ones. The strange land described in this statement is one in which a sinister secularist government is determined to force Christians to betray their principles about abortion or the belief that "holy matrimony" is "an institution ordained by God." The idea that same-sex civil marriage will undermine religious marriage is a canard Californians will remember from the campaign for Proposition 8, as is the declaration's complaint that Christian leaders are being prevented from expressing their "religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife."

This sweeping claim is supported by anecdotes of the sort radio talk-show hosts purvey. For example, the declaration says that "a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax-exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions." (In 2007, New Jersey did strip a Methodist camp of its tax privileges under a state recreation program because it no longer was open to all.) For other examples, it must search beyond the United States: "In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality."

The impression left is that the legal environment in which churches must operate is reminiscent of the Roman Empire that threw Christians to the lions. Never mind that advocates of same-sex civil marriage and legal abortion have made significant concessions to believers or that religious groups have recourse to courts, which have aggressively protected the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, exempting believers in some cases from having to comply with applicable laws.

This apocalyptic argument for lawbreaking is disingenuous, but it is also dangerous. Did the Roman Catholic bishops who signed the manifesto consider how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform? They need to be reminded that this is a nation of laws, not of men -- even holy men.

Of course, hate-filled Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage is a signatory of the Manhattan Declaration.

Maine Question 1 Money Total: Over $9m

Joe.My.God has the details of the more than 9 million dollars that was spent to support and oppose Maine's Question 1, which was passed by voters on Tuesday and repealed LD-1020, which would have legalized civil marriage for same-sex couples in that state.

Proponents

The committees that supported Question 1 got their funding almost entirely from churches and conservative Christian organizations and their employees, who gave $3 million, which is 89 percent of the proponents' total. Almost half of proponents' contributions came from the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative Christian group based in New Jersey, which gave $1.6 million. Focus on the Family gave $179,500. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, another large donor, gave $285,988—all to its own ballot committee. In total, dioceses and churches provided $578,904. Out-of-state churches sent in $269,650. Out-of state donors from 45 other states gave $2.1 million to support the measure. New Jersey topped the list at $1.6 million. In a distant second place, Colorado donors gave $143,070, and those from the District of Columbia gave $75,275.

Opponents

The committees that opposed Question 1 relied less on the support of a few major organizations. Opponents of the measure raised money from over 10,000 donors—12 times more than proponents reported. Gay-rights groups and their employees gave $1.8 million, or 31 percent of the total raised by opponents. The Human Rights Campaign topped the list, giving $367,067. The Gill Foundation contributed $275,000. Freedom to Marry gave $200,000 and another $30,000 came from the Vermont affiliate. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $159,056, and EqualityMaine gave $152,151. Out-of-state donors contributed $3.3 million to oppose to the measure. Donations came from all 50 states; the top locations were New York ($761,498), Massachusetts ($653,889), and the District of Columbia ($619,566).

I suppose it is progress that the donors for supporting the denial of fundamental rights to a minority group are not coming from large groups of people, but only a small cadre of religiously motivated heterosexual supremacists.

Maine YES ON 1 Gets $1.1 MILLION from NOM

Sound the alarm! The odious National Organization for Marriage has donated $1.1 million dollars to the heterosexual supremacists called "Stand for Marriage Maine" in the last couple days to make up for the hefty financial advantage the NO ON 1/Protect Maine Equality side had been enjoying as of October 15th.

The latest totals are:

Stand For Marriage Maine            $2,547,860.40                  
Protect Maine Equality/No On 1      $4,069,053.71                   

Just last week, NO ON 1 had a lead of nearly $1.6 million dollars ($2.7m to $1.1m), now that lead has been reduced to $1.5 million.

With recent polls showing Question 1 basically tied at 48-48 this is the time to GET OUT THE VOTE and, if you live on the East Coast, GET THEE TO MAINE!