Nine months of hatin’ on gays
February 2nd, 2008 by Wayne Garcia in Florida Politics, Issues & Wonky Shit, PoliticsAnd then there is the bad news: The religious right gathered enough signatures to get a constitutional amendment
barring same-sex marriage in Florida on the November ballot. That means nine months of campaigning that is certain to make you want to puke your guts out by the end of the ugliness. As news reports quoted one proponent:
“I’m grateful to God first and our supporters second,” said John Stemberger, an organizer for Florida4Marriage.org. “The bottom line is kids need a mom and dad. Same-sex marriages subject kids to a vast, untested social experiment.”
Of course, it makes no difference that same-sex marriages are already illegal in this state (thanks, unfortunately, to a client of my former political consulting firm). Have been since 1997. What this amendment is really about is a chance to vent anti-gay and intolerant rhetoric and drive right-wing voters to the polls in November, since the Republican Party has very little holding it together this year and religious right voters are without a strong presidential candidate. From the same Times article:
The presence of the proposal has the potential to greatly alter voter turnout in a presidential election year.
Evangelicals and social conservatives now have a much higher motivation to go to the polls.
But the proposal could also spur interest from the opposition, which is vast and diverse. An opposition group, the bipartisan Florida Red & Blue Committee, calls the initiative “dangerous and disingenuous.”
(photo credit: Rudy Kleysteuber/flickr.com)
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February 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Curious about the signers of the petition? KnowThyNeighbor.org has a searchable database by name, street and county. In the Bible, “know” has a curious alternative meaning given this context dontcha think?
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Only in Flori-duh could this be an issue.
There’s nothing like ignorance and hate to get the Christian right energized.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 am
“…The bottom line is kids need a mom and dad…”
…So let’s forget about such trivialities as food, shelter, affordable insurance of any kind, etc. First things first!
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Log Cabin Republicans of Tampa Bay has been planning our opposition to this amendment for almost a year and have joined forces with Florida Red & Blue to defeat it. LCR-TAB’s game plan all along has been that the proposal would be on the ballot in November and that we wouldn’t wait for the February 1 deadline to start organizing.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Despite the fact that these constitutional amendments have passed in nearly every state that gets them on the ballot, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion in Florida at all. Arizona, of all places, defeated the ballot measure in 2006. And as a former resident of Arizona, that surprised the hell out of me.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Alex . . . . Log Cabin Republicans of Tampa Bay can’t work with that kind of assumption. We’re going to work our a$$e$ off to defeat this amendment.