IDs of gay partnership foes could be released next week
The names of people who signed petitions seeking to overturn Washington’s “everything but marriage” same-sex domestic partner law won’t be released publicly following a federal judge’s temporary restraining order.
Sponsors of Referendum 71 went to U.S. District Court in Tacoma Wednesday seeking the order. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle has set a full hearing on the matter for Sept. 3.
The names of everyone who signed Referendum-71 petitions are publicly available under open-government laws. A gay-rights group says it wants to post all the names online. But the R-71 campaign says that could lead to harassment.
Nick Handy, state elections director, said in a statement: “Referendum petitions become public records under the law once they have been turned over to us by sponsors. Our consistent practice has been to make these available upon public request. By early next week we will be in a position to make these available, and absent a court order, our intent has been to respond to public records requests in a timely way.”
Backers of R-71 turned in about 138,000 signatures Saturday. They need 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot.
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.
The process of counting and verifying the signatures could go until the last week of August.
See IDs of gay partnership foes could be released next week Seattle Post Intelligencer
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Wash. gay partnership foes try to shield signers
State officials won’t resist a temporary restraining order that would block public release of petition signatures for a gay-partnership referendum.
The case centers on Referendum 71, which would ask voters to approve or reject expanded partnership rights for gay couples.
The names of everyone who signed R-71 petitions are publicly available under open-government laws.
A gay-rights group is planning to post all the names online, so partnership supporters can talk to those people about the referendum.
But the R-71 campaign says that could lead to harassment. So they’re asking a federal judge to keep the petitions secret, until they can make their argument in court.
See Wash. gay partnership foes try to shield signers
Seattle Times
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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.
See Gay partnership foes turn in referendum signatures
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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.
See Wash. gay partnership foes say “too close to call”
Seattle Times
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A political fight over the rights of same-sex…
A political fight over the rights of same-sex couples is drawing nearer in Washington State.
Backers of Referendum 71, who want to overturn a new state same-sex partnership law, have made an appointment to file signatures with state elections officials Saturday afternoon.
Saturday is the deadline to collect 120,577 valid voter signatures and qualify for the Nov. 3 state ballot.
Protect Marriage Washington is the primary backer of R-71. Gary Randall of the allied Faith and Freedom Network said by e-mail: “We are gathering and counting signatures. I think we are making good progress.”
Protect Marriage has raised just more than $20,000 for a campaign that so far has been waged mostly through churches. Randall said the group is not anti-gay but pro-marriage. The group wants voters to reject Senate Bill 5688, the “everything but marriage” legislation that passed this year and adds about 250 rights of marriage for registered same-sex partners in Washington.
Defenders of the new state law, who call themselves Washington Families Standing Together, say they are ready to defend the third round of rights lawmakers added since creating the partners registry in 2007.
See Washington State braces for battle over same-sex rights
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Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, a sexual sitcom, opens with a pair of breeders in bed. A youngish married couple, Ben (mumblecordeon Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), confess they’re too tired to procreate that night and then confess their mutual relief. As if in response, the doorbell rings at 2 a.m. and Ben’s long-lost college buddy, Andrew (Blair Witch Project survivor Joshua Leonard), stumbles in from deepest Mexico. Anna, who has never had the pleasure, watches the unexpected bromantic action with grim incredulity. Aggressively loud, demonstrative, and hairy, Andrew is a credible representation of Ben’s id.
Reuniting an uptight married man with a footloose old pal, Shelton’s third feature offers a (much) more extreme version of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, also a sort of buddy movie, also shot in the Pacific Northwest. In this case, the lost weekend is steeped in sexual anxiety. Friday night, Ben has to retrieve merry Andrew from a house called “Dionysus” — home to a bi cutie (the director herself) and an omnisexual assortment of roisterers. No orgies, but plenty of stoned dancing. Anna, who has prepared her signature pork chop dinner, sits home alone. She stews; Ben gets stewed. Prompted by news of an amateur porn festival — sponsored by a local alt-weekly — Ben finds himself proposing to costar with showoff Andrew in a mad art project, dude-on-dude action, totally straight, yet somewhere “beyond gay.” Maybe they’ll be famous. The only problem: Just who is going to bone whom?
Having thus invested its protagonists in a game of “chicken,” played to justify their respective life choices, Humpday delivers some excellent situation comedy. The scene where Andrew and Anna have a get-acquainted drink and Andrew inadvertently exposes Ben’s boastful lie that his wife has signed off on their “project” is pure Honeymooners. (Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!) Ben can’t tell Anna why he wants to have sex with Andrew, only that it’s very, very important to him. And, terrified that Ben might think he really did have a yen, Andrew can only sigh, “I wish I was more gay.” Of course. Just as Brüno is more of a comment on celebrity culture than the love (or hate) that dare not speak its name, Humpday is actually less a queer comedy than a satiric view of macho. Appreciative as Shelton may be of her dudes, she has another agenda. Each in his own way, the guys have been freaked by a manifestation of assertive female sexuality — although the term “pussy-whipped” is never used.
See Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
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Effort To Ban Gay Unions Falling Short In Wash. State
The effort to place a gay-inclusive domestic partnership law up for a vote in Washington State appears to be falling short.
With a looming deadline of Saturday at 2PM, opponents of the law dubbed by the media as the “everything but marriage law” have only 4 full days left to gather thousands of valid signatures.
Opponents – a coalition of mostly religious groups – announced their attempt to repeal the bill in November, even before it became law in May. Gary Randall, president of the Faith and Freedom Network, says his group filed Referendum 71 because the law is too close to marriage and violates the law.
“The bill … elevates homosexual relationships to that of traditional marriage, thus eliminating any legal difference between domestic partnerships and marriage,” Randall wrote in a blog entry posted on the group’s website before the bill became law.
“I do not believe a majority [of] Washingtonians believe in homosexual marriage, nor do they want to become a national attraction for homosexuals from other states and countries,” he added.
Organizers, however, admit that they have fallen desperately behind in collecting the 120,577 valid signatures needed to qualify the measure. Randall told the conservative group Concerned Women for America that only 75,000 signatures had been collected as of Friday. Leaving the group at least 45,577 signatures short. But in order to ensure there are sufficient valid signatures, the group estimates it needs to collect 75,000 signatures. In other words, opponents need to collect as many signatures in one week as they did in the previous seven to eight weeks.
The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill in April along a mostly party-line vote of 62 to 35. Senators approved the bill in March with a 30 to 18 vote, and Governor Chris Gregoire signed the bill into law on May 18. See Effort To Ban Gay Unions Falling Short In Wash. State
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Rep. Sally Kern says ‘debauched’ gay marriage caused bad economy
Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma, who has called being gay a “deadly lifestyle”, has released what she calls a “Proclamation for Morality”, which reads more like a manifesto against homosexuality. Kern, who apparently is unfamiliar with the fact that the United States was founded on the principle of separation of church and State, consistently uses religion as a basis for her arguments.
The New Civil Rights Movement published Kern’s “proclamation”, in which she says gay marriage is a form of “debauchery” like “abortion, pornography, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, and child abuse.” She blames the bad state of the economy on this so-called “debauchery”:
“WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national
moral crisis; and
WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion,
pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and
many other forms of debauchery; and
WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and
WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused
to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of
Prayer; and
WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States
disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to
an immoral behavior”
Tulsa World called the reading and signing of Kern’s proclamation “circus-like”. About 200 supporters stood with her inside the State Capitol gathering signatures, while Kern was repeatedly interrupted by protesters.
See Rep. Sally Kern says ‘debauched’ gay marriage caused bad economy …
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Marriage fight looms IN mAINE
Opponents and supporters of gay marriage are laying the groundwork for a tough summer political campaign that experts say will put Maine in the national spotlight.
Organizers of an effort to overturn a new law legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine have hired the California public relations firm that ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign that overturned same-sex marriage there.
And supporters of same-sex marriage, who oppose the people’s veto effort, have hired a seasoned Maine political strategist who ran the successful Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign in 2005. That campaign fought a people’s veto of Maine’s gay rights law.
Maine became the fifth state to legalize gay marriage in May, when the Legislature passed a bill and Gov. John Baldacci signed it into law. Opponents, led by the Catholic church and other clergy, immediately began the campaign for a people’s veto, which would ask voters to overturn the law.
Organizers of the people’s veto are attempting to collect 55,087 signatures of registered Maine voters to put the question on the ballot. The same-sex marriage law would take effect 90 days after the Legislature’s June 13 adjournment. But if the veto effort collects enough signatures before then, the law’s implementation would be stayed.
At least five political action committees have been formed to help raise funds to support the people’s veto effort. Two have been formed to oppose a people’s veto.
According to the latest filings with the state Ethics Commission, most haven’t raised money. But one, StandForMarriageMaine.com, has raised $60,000 from the National Organization for Marriage. The next filing deadline is July 15.
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Maine Gay-marriage foes hire California firm that ran Prop 8
Opponents and supporters of gay marriage are laying the groundwork for a tough summer political campaign that experts say will put Maine in the national spotlight.
Organizers of an effort to overturn a new law legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine have hired the California public relations firm that ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign to overturn same-sex marriage there.
Supporters of the law have hired a seasoned Maine political strategist who ran the successful Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign in 2005. That campaign fought a people’s veto of Maine’s gay-rights law.
Maine became the fifth state to legalize gay marriage in May. Opponents, led by the Catholic Church and other clergy, immediately began campaigning for a people’s veto, which would ask voters to overturn the law.
Organizers of the veto effort are attempting to collect 55,087 signatures of registered Maine voters to put the question on the ballot. The same-sex marriage law will take effect 90 days after the Legislature’s June 13 adjournment unless the veto effort collects enough signatures before then, which would put the law on hold.
At least five political action committees have been formed to help raise funds to support the people’s veto effort. Two have been formed to oppose the veto.
According to the latest filings with the state Ethics Commission, most haven’t raised money. But StandForMarriageMaine.com has raised $60,000 from the National Organization for Marriage. The next filing deadline is July 15.
See Gay-marriage foes hire California firm that ran Prop 8
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