Freedom to Marry touts pledge cards, gets name change (Maine)

[fight4my3sons]

The coalition fighting repeal of the gay-marriage law will call itself No on 1/Protect Maine Equality.

PORTLAND — A coalition fighting a move to repeal the state's gay-marriage law says it has collected more than 60,000 pledge cards of support from Maine residents.

Maine Freedom to Marry organizers announced at a noon rally Thursday at Portland City Hall that more than 400 volunteers had collected the cards from across the state. The announcement came a day before opponents are scheduled to deliver signatures to Augusta to put the issue of gay marriage on the November ballot.

The rally was the latest development in a campaign that is expected to be highly emotional and very expensive. By mid-July, the coalition of opponents of gay marriage, the Stand for Maine Marriage political action committee, had raised more than $343,000, while those fighting the repeal had taken in $138,640 in contributions.>



<At the rally, Connolly announced that Maine Freedom to Marry had legally changed its name to No on 1/ Protect Maine Equality. Mark Sullivan, a spokesman for the campaign, said the name change is designed to make it clear that a "no" vote on the referendum question in November would retain the gay-marriage law.

"We want people to be absolutely clear what they are voting about," Sullivan said.


http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=274002&ac=PHnws

There is no official No on 1 site yet. To help in any way please go to the Maine Freedom to Marry website: http://mainefreedomtomarry.com/
Here is the facebook No on 1 group: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1357633913&ref=profile#/pages/Protect-Maine-Equality/105762473525?ref=mf

[RetiredTrotskyite]

1. Did Anyone....

go through the comments? The arroagance and mean-spiritedness of the anti-equality crowd is mind-blowing:

"The vote will not be in favor of homosexual Marriage, the Christian community will see to that, not to mention the redneck factor."

If this asshat is a Christian, I'm glad I'm Pagan! Where the arrogance comes in is that they believe that they should get to vote on people's civil rights. Who the hell died and left them as God? Then a poster commented that the GLBT community work on wearing the electorate down, having vote after vote after vote til the community gets the answer it wants. Well, by getting all these anti-equality initatives/ repeal of laws on the ballot, they are doing the very thing of which they accuse us.

Another thing is this bullshit that since the Left is intolerant, they get to be intolerant as well. Who started the bigotry? Homophobes. I'm not saying that two rights make a wrong, but at least the LGBT community has much more basis for their less-than-tolerant attitude.

I pray that this veto attempt is voted down in November--people should never have been allowed to vote on a civil right in the first place. Hey, you can vote on whether or not I can get married--can I vote on whether you can be a Christian? You can bet if that sort of vote ever came up, the Christians would go ballistic--as well they should. But if you cannot vote on the right of a person to choose his own faith, you also cannot vote away the right of all people to "life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness."

I got tired of it and posted:

All you anti-marriage people nauseate me. What is diminished in your life if LGBT people are allowed to marry? Nothing. I get so tired of hearing that you all have to "protect" marriage. If you really thought that, you would be agitating to tighten up the divorce laws. Any damage that has happened to marriage in the past few decades has been done by heterosexual people. not LGBT people.

I was marrie to my spouse, a wonderful man, in Canada a couple of years ago. Guess what? We are completely faithful to one another--we don't even think about cheating. Why? Unlike many straights, we take marriage very seriously.

You need to work on heterosexuals and the propensity to cheat even when married and making divorce more difficult to get, except in cases of abuse/fidelity. That is where protection of marriage will come from, not from denying civil rights to a portion of society simply because you are made uncomfortable with their sexual orientation.