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 lobbyAugust 5th, 2011
These eyes are for Pawlenty.
She also has designs on Perry. National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher appeared on CBN to discuss NOM’s marriage pledge which has already been signed by Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachman, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The wide-ranging pledge (CBN’s interviewer strangely called it “narrowly-written”) calls on GOP presidential candidates to:
Gallagher expects Texas gov. Rick Perry to sign the pledge one he officially announces his candidacy. But one major holdout, Minnesota gov. Tim Pawlenty, has Gallagher pleading for his support:
Well we will certainly offer the opportunity to Governor Rick Perry and any other major candidates who step into the race. We understand that before you’re declared candidate it would probably not be appropriate to start signing pledges. The big question is what’s going to happen with Governor Tim Pawlenty, who explicitly declined to sign NOM’s marriage pledge this week. We’re hoping the governor changes his mind because we think it’s pretty peculiar for governor Pawlenty, who has been a champion for marriage in Minnesota, to refuse to do the same for the people of America.
Gallagher is counting on victories in passing anti-marriage amendments in Minnesota and North Carolina, and expects a rollback on marriage in New Hampshire in January.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Announcer: Three GOP presidential candidates say they will support a narrowly-written pledge against gay marriage. Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum all have agreed to a statement created by the National Organization for Marriage. It supports a Federal Marriage Amendment, defends the federal Defense of Marriage Act known as DOMA, and supports the appointment of federal judges who oppose a constitutional right to gay marriage. Romney declined to support a more broadly-written pledge against gay marriage. It was created by The Family Leader, a conservative Iowa organization. And here now to talk about the pledge is Maggie Gallagher from the National Organization for Marriage. Thanks for being with us, Maggie.
Gallagher: A pleasure. Thank you.
Announcer: Now, why do you feel it so important to get the candidates to sign the pledge?
Gallagher: well, three marriage champions have emerged. There are a lot of good candidates in this race and there may be more soon, but these are candidates willing to go beyond saying they support one-man-one-woman marriage, which even President Obama claims he supports, and commit to some concrete actions to protect marriage if they are leader of the free world and President of the United States. But we were very pleased that the two leaders in the polls, Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, both agree to take a stand for marriage. And Rick Santorum, God bless him, has always been a champion for marriage.
Announcer: Yes, he has. Now Bachmann, Romney and Santorum have agreed to sign the pledge. Do you expect other candidates to come on board as well?
Gallagher: Well we will certainly offer the opportunity to Governor Rick Perry and any other major candidates who step into the race. We understand that before you’re declared candidate it would probably not be appropriate to start signing pledges. The big question is what’s going to happen with Governor Tim Pawlenty, who explicitly declined to sign NOM’s marriage pledge this week. We’re hoping the governor changes his mind because we think it’s pretty peculiar for governor Pawlenty, who has been a champion for marriage in Minnesota, to refuse to do the same for the people of America.
Announcer: Yeah, interesting. Now supporters of traditional marriage have lost some key battles over same-sex marriage in New York. Do you think the 2012 election will reverse that trend?
Gallagher: Well we win a lot of victories, too. That was a big loss and we are working with people on the ground in New York. We sponsored four rallies across New York. We don’t think the fight is over in New York and we think we’re going to be able to demonstrate that it was a really big mistake for the Republican Party to help pass gay marriage in New York. So the 2012 campaign, what’s the good news is, the major candidates at this point who are announced have all agreed that marriage is an important issue and they need to stand strong for it. So yeah, we do think the campaign will be helpful. We think winning in Minnesota will be helpful, we think there will be a vote on gay marriage in New Hampshire in January. We’re hopeful about North Carolina and some other states. And so this is an ongoing battle, by no means over. And the media only reports the failures. They’re not reporting that time and time again, even in deep blue states like Rhode Island and Maryland, we’ve been able to win great victories for marriage.
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Timothy Kincaid
August 5th, 2011
We too think winning in Minnesota will be helpful. And, unlike Maggie, the polls do seem to be on our side.
The current consensus is that when it comes to anti-gay marriage bans, the “no” votes (our side) in polls are the votes you are going to get while the “yes” and all of the “undecided” will vote yes (statistically, not individually).
The last poll, back in May, shows the Minnesota Marriage Ban with 39% support and 55% opposed. Even using the above rule, it loses 45 to 55.
And Minnesota has one peculiarity to their propositions: to pass it must receive a majority of all voters, not just those who cast a vote on that proposition. Those who vote for President but not one way or the other on the proposition are counted as a “no” vote.
To see how that could impact a vote, in 2008 7,001,084 Californians voted “yes” on Proposition 8. That was 52.2% of all votes on the Proposition.
But 340,611 voters did not vote on that measure. Were they counted as “no” votes, as Minnesota rules require, then Prop 8 would still pass, but only with 50.9% of the vote and with only a 258,991 vote lead out of 13.4 million voters.
jc
August 5th, 2011
okay, i can’t resist asking….when does maggie unzip her forehead and show herself to be the last living descendent of the slitheen family from raxacoricofallapatorius?
Stefan
August 5th, 2011
Gay marriage will not be repealed in New Hampshire. The issue is nothing more than political grandstanding for the GOP primary kickoff season. Even the bill’s sponsor expresses “uncertainty” of having the votes (there are still 26 Republicans in the state house who voted against repeal in 2010, and we would only need 4 more to kill a veto-proof majority). Plus, even if it does manage a veto-proof majority and pass, gay rights groups will immediately sue and likely stay the law, tying up the state’s legal resources for years and wasting much needed revenue which the state needs.
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