This is why civil rights should never be up for a vote.

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Dear Maine. You suck

Throughout the bitter campaign, supporters of same sex marriage had stressed that gay couples deserve equal treatment under the law, banking on Maine’s reputation as a “live and let live” state. Opponents repeatedly warned voters that if gays were allowed to marry, it would be taught in the public schools, a tactic that proved effective in California last year.
The Catholic Church was a leading supporter of the repeal campaign, even asking parishes to pass a second collection plate at Sunday mass to help the cause. The National Organization for Marriage also contributed heavily to the repeal campaign; it is under investigation by Maine’s ethics commission for possibly flouting state campaign finance laws by refusing to reveal its donors.

They say god made us all in his own image. Considering the fact that so many of us seem to be fearful, hateful, illogical, irrational cruel disgusting assholes, this is really not a recommendation.


In the meantime, there were some victories.

The anti-discrimination ballot proposal in Kalamazoo, Michigan PASSED!

Kalamazoo city voters decisively adopted an ordinance Tuesday that extends anti-discrimination protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals.
The ordinance passed 7,671 to 4,731, making Kalamazoo the 16th city in Michigan to adopt such a gay-rights ordinance that grants the protections in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations.
The ordinance was approved in all but three of the city’s voting places. It also passed among heavy absentee ballot voting.
"There’s a lot of people who will wake up and breathe easier tomorrow knowing they won’t be fired or kicked out of their homes for being gay, lesbian or transgender," said Jon Hoadley, campaign manager One Kalamazoo, the pro-ordinance campaign committee. "It was astounding the overwhelming support that we had. Kalamazoo said this is what it wants."

...
Meanwhile, it also looks like a same-sex marriage 'Everything but marriage' initiative in the state of Washington may pass as well, though it's too close to call this morning.

The trends looked positive for the measure, which would expand the state's domestic-partnership law.
It was winning by nearly 3-to-1 in King County, where about 30 percent of the state's voters reside, and also doing well in other Puget Sound-area counties. It was being soundly rejected across Eastern Washington and in many other counties.

...

As pointed out in the Comments by a variety of folks, St. Petersburg, Florida has now elected its first openly-gay City Council member Steve Kornell, Chapel Hill, North Carolina elected its first openly-gay mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, one of the two people that will go into a run-off election in five weeks for mayor of Houston is Annise Parker, a lesbian, who was the leading vote-getter and, in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Pugh was elected as the city's first openly-gay Council member (despite having the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News both retract their endorsements of him in the past several weeks.)MORE

Comments

[sanguinity]

I hate November election nights. This has been going on for all of my adulthood. It is not an easy thing to feel this mass of people out there doing this thing to you, and to not have any say that matters in it.

There was talk of trying to repeal Oregon's anti-marriage amendment come 2012. But with Maine going down the wrong way, and mere domestic partnerships this close in Washington...? Argh.


And I know you already put a strike-out on the word, but domestic partnerships aren't "marriage in everything but name": it's not within a single state's power to grant that, and especially not if they don't use the word marriage. I did an overview of that two years ago when Oregon did "everything but the name" domestic partnerships: overview plus itemization. Since then, it's turned out that theoretical rights of "everything but the name" don't actually manifest, because too many people don't know what a domestic partnership is. So there have been Oregon domestic partners who have been denied visiting rights because they're not married, etc. And it's not just Oregon: it's been a pattern in other states that passed "everything but the name" partnerships or civil unions.

People act as if the word doesn't have power, as if you can withhold the word and that doesn't matter. Is anyone really supposed to believe that? Even if one wasn't aware of the stuff I detail above, if the withholding the word doesn't matter, why are people so damn jealous about the word?

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

If I were to create a religion, the Deity of All would be twins. One full of fears and self loathing and a need to control others and one that rejoiced in seeing how others perceived the world and tried to balance living in their environment with mastering it.

Then I remember Christianity has the Devil, even though many claim that punishing a desire for family and stability does not fulfill the wish for chaos of that entity.

[doktor-x.livejournal.com]

I’ve tried to explain to anti-gay marriage conservatives that they are voting to strip away the civil rights of minorities, and they look at you blankly and start rambling all the bullshit about protecting the family and marriage blah blah blah… We need state amendments to prevent conservative religious people from mating.