Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyNovember 7th, 2008
The State of Maine has had some few limited same-sex partnership rights in the form of Domestic Partnerships since July of 2004. But there appears to be support for increasing recognition and protections.
On election day, Equality Maine had volunteers sit at 100 precinct hoping to collect 10,000 signatures in favor of marriage equality. They got over 33,000, nearly 5% of all Maine voters.
We hit our goal of 10,000 signatures by noon on Election Day. I was stunned, but there was no time to slow down and celebrate. Calls began pouring in from our volunteers — they were running out of postcards, and voters wanted to sign. We scrambled to print and deliver thousands more postcards across the state.
Lines at the polls were long, but even after waiting an hour or more to vote, people waited in line to sign our postcards. As the postcards ran out, voters began signing scraps of paper, jotting their names and addresses down on anything they could find, and handing them to our volunteers.
When we approached voters about marriage equality for all couples in committed relationships, the most frequently-asked question we heard was this: Where do I sign? I’m so proud of our hard-working field organizers and volunteers. And I’m so proud of my fellow Mainers, who realize that marriage is about treating all families equally under the law.
They are also reporting that after the election there are now “pro-equality majorities” in both chambers of the legislature. I wasn’t able to determine how such persons were defined.
However, Equality Maine appears to have a go-slow approach. WCSH6 reports
Betsy Smith of Equality Maine said her group is trying to build support for gay marriage slowly, telling Mainers it would be another form of legal protection for gay and lesbian couples. She said Equality Maine members will push for marriage once they feel most mainers would support it.
Smith said, “Our plan in Maine is we know we have to change the hearts and minds of Mainers. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do the work. We’re going to do the hard work of talking to voters.”
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Ashlee James
November 20th, 2008
Religious leaders across the state held news conferences today to urge Mainers to end marriage discrimination against same-sex couples.We feel a moral obligation at this pivotal time to raise our voices on behalf of Mainers who are denied that most basic human right—the right to marry and form a family with the person of their choice, said the Rev. Mark Doty, pastor at the Hammond Street Congregational Church, where a press conference was held.Doty announced that more than 120 religious leaders from 14 different faith traditions across Maine, have formed the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry in Maine.The timing of the press conference coincided with the beginning of marriages for same sex couples in Connecticut on Wednesday, Doty said, and a celebration next week of the fifth anniversary of the Massa-chusetts court case that allowed gay marriage in that state.
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Ashlee James
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