NY Senate fails to put gay marriage to vote
(Albany, NY) After weeks of uncertainty and pleas for action by Gov. David Paterson, New York’s Senate failed to vote on a bill legalizing same-sex marriage during a special session Tuesday.
Advocates and opponents say the Senate lacked the 32 votes needed to approve the measure, which Paterson strongly supports and …
Tags: Advocates, Albany Ny, David Paterson New York, gay marriage, Legalizing Same Sex Marriage, marriage, Ny Senate, Opponents, same sex marriage, Senate Bill, Special Session, Uncertainty, VoteWA homophobes oppose finance laws
Opponents to Washington state domestic partnerships filed suit to shield their donors’ names.
Tags: Domestic Partnerships, Donors, Finance Laws, Opponents, Washington StateWA homophobes oppose finance laws
Opponents to Washington state domestic partnerships filed suit to shield their donors’ names.
Tags: Domestic Partnerships, Donors, Finance Laws, Opponents, Washington StateGay-marriage supporters, opponents square off
(Portland, Me.) A supporter and an opponent of same-sex marriage made their respective cases on live television Wednesday, less than a week before a statewide referendum on whether to allow gay marriage in Maine.
The referendum is about equality under the law, Mary Bonauto of Protect Maine Equality said in a …
Tags: Equality, Gay Maine, Gay Marriage Supporters, Live Television, marriage, Mary Bonauto, Opponent, Opponents, same sex marriage, Statewide ReferendumSame-sex marriage bill in DC appears unstoppable
(Washington) A bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry in the nation’s capital was introduced Tuesday, a measure that even opponents acknowledged seems almost unstoppable.
The bill was nearly certain to pass the D.C. city council, but whether it becomes law is more complicated because Congress gets an opportunity to …
Tags: Congress, marriage, Marriage Bill, Opponents, Same Sex Couples, same sex marriagePro-gay marriage group spent big in Vermont
Vermont Freedom to Marry says it spent more than $293,000 lobbying lawmakers and the public on the same-sex marriage bill that was approved by the Legislature, far outspending its opponents.
In lobbyist disclosure forms filed Monday with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office, the pro-gay marriage group reported spending about $65,000 between April 1 and June 30 — some of it in the week leading up to the Legislature’s April 7 vote.
Take It to The People, which opposed the measure, spent about $10,000 altogether but none in the reporting period.
See Pro-gay marriage group spent big in Vermont Boston Herald
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Metro is playing catch-up, say supporters of gay protections
The argument that protecting Metro government’s gay employees would force the private sector to follow suit is all backward, supporters of a new anti-discrimination measure say.
Around the country, 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies’ anti-discrimination policies include sexual orientation or gender identity. In Nashville, some of the city’s largest private employers — http://www.vanderbilt.edu/“>Vanderbilt University and http://www.hcahealthcare.com/“>Hospital Corporation of America — put similar policies into place.
Against that landscape, the new measure’s supporters say, it should have a better chance of passage than a similar one proposed in 2003. But opponents say following the private-sector pack isn’t the way to go.
“Just because someone else does something doesn’t mean it’s right, and we learned that when we all took off from kindergarten,” said David Fowler, a former state senator and president of the http://www.factn.org/“>Family Action Council of Tennessee. “So unless we are going to act like lemmings and just blindly do what everybody else is doing, we need to stop and think before we make this a law.”
The city already has protections based on race, sex, religious affiliation and national origin in place, Fowler said, and protection based on sexuality is incongruous. He also said such a law could expose the city to lawsuits by people who feel it was broken.
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The Tennessean
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Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push
LOS ANGELES — Discouraged by stubborn poll numbers and pessimistic political consultants, major financial backers of same-sex marriage are cautioning gay rights groups to delay a campaign to overturn California’s ban on such unions until at least 2012.
Earlier this year, many supporters of same-sex marriage seemed eager to mount a 2010 campaign to overturn Proposition 8, which was passed by California voters in November and defined marriage as “between a man and a woman.”
But the timing of another campaign has since been questioned by several of the movement’s big donors, including David Bohnett, a millionaire philanthropist and technology entrepreneur who gave more than $1 million to the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 8.
“In conversations with a number of my fellow major No on 8 donors,” Mr. Bohnett said in an e-mail message, “I find that they share my sentiment: namely, that we will step up to the plate — with resources and talent — when the time is right.”
“The only thing worse than losing in 2008,” he added, “would be to lose again in 2010.”
The issue of when to go back to the polls was also the central topic at a contentious “leadership summit” held Saturday at a church in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, where about 200 gay rights advocates gathered to discuss their next step. It was the second large meeting of gay leaders since late May when the California Supreme Court ruled against a legal challenge to Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.
Shortly after the court’s decision, officials at Equality California, one of the largest gay rights groups in California, issued an online plea for donations for a possible 2010 campaign, citing a need to capitalize on anger over the decision and on the seeming momentum from the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in several other states.
But that thinking has apparently evolved.
Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, said he spent June and early July asking the opinions of nearly two dozen California political consultants and pollsters and had been surprised by the almost unanimous opinion that a 2010 race was a bad idea.
“I expected having watched the protests and the real pain that the L.G.B.T. community had experienced that there would be some real measurable remorse in the electorate,” Mr. Solomon said, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “But if you look at the poll numbers since November, they really haven’t moved at all.”
A major factor in any California balloting, of course, is money; campaigns here are remarkably expensive, with a number of costly media markets. The Proposition 8 campaign, for example, cost more than $80 million, with opponents spending some $43 million.
Sarah Callahan, ch
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Gay partnership foes turn in referendum signatures
Opponents of a measure that passed the Legislature this year giving same-sex domestic partners all the rights of married people turned in signatures to the secretary of state’s office Saturday in attempt to overturn the new law through a citizen referendum.
Referendum 71 needs 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot. Exactly how many signatures the R-71 camp turned in Saturday wasn’t immediately clear. The secretary of state’s office said it received the first batch a little after 3 p.m. Saturday.
Election officials suggest submitting about 150,000 signatures to offset any invalid signatures. Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said usually about 18 percent of signatures checked turn out to be invalid.
He said Saturday that R-71 backers were cutting it very close.
“They’re definitely running on fumes, in terms of trying to get their pad,” Ammons said.
The process of counting and verifying the signatures could go until the last week of August.
If R-71 proponents don’t have enough signatures, the domestic partnership expansion will immediately take effect. If the measure does qualify, voters will be asked to either approve or reject the new law.
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Wash. gay partnership foes say “too close to call”
OLYMPIA, Wash. —
Washington state’s latest expansion of domestic partnerships for gay couples was hanging in limbo Friday as opponents announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort so far “too close to call.”
In a statement to supporters, organizers of the Referendum 71 campaign said they believe they will have at least the minimum 120,577 petition signatures needed by Saturday to qualify for the ballot.
However, R-71 organizer Gary Randall said the campaign doesn’t have enough extra signatures to act as a cushion for erroneous or duplicate petition signatures, which must come from registered Washington voters.
To help meet the deadline, Randall appealed to R-71 supporters to gather additional signatures and drive them to the state Capitol on Saturday afternoon.
“We’re not trying to have a rally or anything,” Randall said later by telephone. “We need the signatures, we truly do.”
The new “everything but marriage” expansion of domestic partnerships is scheduled to take effect Sunday, but the law will be delayed if referendum sponsors turn in their petitions.
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Seattle Times
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