Box Turtle Bulletin

Finland likely to get marriage equality next year

Finland has had Registered Partner recognition since 2002. But that is likely to be upgraded to civil marriage in the coming year (Ice News)

Regardless of the outcome of next year’s Finnish parliamentary elections, the governing majority is expected to implement a motion in support of gender-neutral marriage and adoption.

Liechtenstein introduces same-sex couple bill

From the Italian site Queerblog (Google translation):

Aurelia Frick, Minister of Justice of Liechtenstein, had promised that by summer 2010, the Principality will give itself a law that recognizes same-sex couples. Now the Government submitted the bill to Parliament which is expected to be treated de facto unions to heterosexual marriages as regards inheritance, social security, retirement pensions, immigration and naturalization, and other tax matters. Remain outside the law and adoptions that access to artificial insemination.

I am not certain whether this is a civil marriage bill, allowable on the same terms as heterosexual marriage, or if it is just the granting of limited rights to de facto couples.

The race for eighth (and ninth and tenth)

With Italy now out of the running, the big question is which nation will be the eighth to recognize same-sex marriage. The contestants are:

Portugal – the legislature passed the bill. The President sent it to the supreme court which approved the bill. And now he has until about the end of the month to either veto or sign it. It vetoed, there are probably enough votes to overturn. The time frame is between immediately and early May.

Nepal – it is believed that same-sex marriage will be included in the new constitution. This should be in place no later than May 28, 2010.

Iceland – the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News is reporting:

The Sigurdardóttir administration presented the bill to Parliament on March 23. The bill’s passage is expected soon, and same-sex marriage could become legal as early as June 27

Luxembourg – the Minister of Justice said in January that marriage would be legalized by the legislature’s summer break.

Argentina – Although the administration intends to legalize marriage, without a law in place several judges are fighting over whether to grant couples the right to marry. In addition to the male couples previously reported, two women have now legally married in Buenos Aires (Santiago Times):

Two women that were exiled during the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976/1983) were married Friday in Buenos Aires, the first wedding among lesbians in the country, reported the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Federation of Argentina, or FALGBT.

Norma Castillo, from Uruguay, and Ramona Arevalo, Argentine, were married by Judge Elena Liberatori after having requested legal protection within the framework of the campaign “Same right, same names,” which the LGBT Argentine Federation has been carrying out for several months. They are both 67 years old and have been a couple for over 30 years.

Slovenia – the Family Law Bill does appear to continue to move forward but it is difficult to figure out just where things stand.

Cyprus – this tiny island seems to have dropped out of the race. Earlier this week the Cypriot government continued pondering the issue but the language now seems to focus on “partnerships”. (Cyprus Mail)

THE GOVERNMENT will take “seriously” the Ombudswoman’s latest report recommending legal reforms to allow same-sex partnerships, said Interior Ministry Permanent Secretary Lazaros Savvides yesterday.

“No decision has been taken. It is something we have to study a bit further. We have not closed the issue, it remains open,” he said.
….
Savvides told the Sunday Mail that the various departments will continue to examine the issue and reconvene after June to discuss the matter.

No marriage celebration in Italy.

The supreme court of Italy has rejected the appeal by same-sex couples to allow them to marry. (SF Chronicle)

Italy’s highest court rejected appeals by three same-sex couples whose marriage filings were refused by local officials, a setback to gay advocates.

The Constitutional Court judged the requests related to gay unions “not admissible” and “unfounded,” according to an e- mailed statement today. Courts in the northern cities of Trento and Venice had asked the court in Rome to rule on the matter.

The motivation for the decision will be published in coming days.

Italy’s supreme court to rule on same-sex marriage this week

From On-Top Magazine

Italy’s highest court is expected to rule on a gay marriage case this week, Italian media is reporting.
…
The court will meet in closed session to discuss a large number of appeals – including the gay marriage case – on Tuesday and Wednesday. In March, the court postponed making a decision until after Easter.

And the race continues. Will Italy or Portugal be the eighth nation to recognize same-sex marriages?

No 2010 Reversal for Proposition 8

Most gay organizations did not support going back to the poll this year and were not helpful with the effort to get marriage equality back on the ballot. It now appears that with broad support the low profile effort to collect signatures was not successful. (Contra Costa Times)

Same-sex marriage advocates have failed to gather enough petition signatures to place on November’s ballot a measure that would repeal Proposition 8’s constitutional ban.

Though it didn’t gather at least 694,354 valid signatures from registered voters by Monday’s deadline, the Restore Equality 2010 Coalition insists the effort wasn’t in vain, in that it sets a firm foundation for another try in 2012.

Obama’s “Short List” pick for SCOTUS might be anti-gay marriage

ABC News is reporting that President Obama has at least one person on his “short list”:

As speculation swirls about candidates on the president’s list, administration officials have confirmed that at least one of the president’s top picks is a former State Supreme Court justice who would be the first African-American woman to sit on the country’s high court.

Former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears, an expert in family law and the first African-American woman to serve as a State Supreme Court chief justice, was on Obama’s short list last year. A member of the left-leaning American Constitution Society, she is also a friend of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

While Sears is believed by some to be gay-supportive, her true passion is as an advocate for (heterosexual) marriage. And, as such, she has made statements, built alliances, and contributed to efforts in the past which suggest that she may not completely value equality for our community.

Writing in a Washington Post op-ed in October 2006, Sears made “the case for marriage”. And she identified allies in her quest to have people “get married, stay married”.

I am not alone. For example, “Reconceiving the Family,” a new book published by Cambridge University Press critiquing the ALI’s “principles,” has contributions from 27 family law scholars, including two other state supreme court chief justices. The Institute for American Values recently published a statement, signed by many legal and family scholars, that concluded that “a prime goal of family law should be to identify new ways to support marriage as a social institution so that each year more children are protected by being raised within the marital unions of their parents.” Moreover, the supreme court in my state just established a Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law with an important goal: to find ways to reduce unnecessary divorce and unmarried childbearing. [emphasis added]

If the Institute for American Values sounds familiar, it is because it is the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, the chief witness on the anti-gay side in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. The book Reconceiving the Family is available at his site, and the following is from the synopsis of the statement that Sears commends:

Unfortunately, the recent trend in family law as a discipline and practice has been just the opposite. Family law as a discipline has increasingly tended to commit two serious errors with regard to marriage: (a) to reduce marriage to a creature of statute, a set of legal benefits created by the law, and (b) to imagine marriage as just one of many equally valid lifestyles. This model of marriage is based on demonstrably false and therefore destructive premises. Adopting it in family law as a practice or as an academic discipline will likely make it harder for civil society in the United States to strengthen marriage as a social institution.

As scholars and as citizens, we recognize a shared moral commitment to the basic human dignity of all our fellow citizens, black or white, straight or gay, married or unmarried, religious and non-religious, as well as a moral duty to care about the well-being of children in all family forms. But sympathy and fairness cannot blind us to the importance of the basic sexual facts that give rise to marriage in virtually every known society: The vast majority of human children are created through acts of passion between men and women. Connecting children to their mother and father requires a social and legal institution called “marriage” with sufficient power, weight, and social support to influence the erotic behavior of young men and women.

We do not all agree on individual issues, from the best way to reform unilateral divorce to whether and how the law should be altered to benefit same-sex couples. We do agree that the conceptual models of marriage used by many advocates are inadequate and thus contribute to the erosion of a marriage culture in the United States. We seek to work together across the divisive issue of gay marriage to affirm the basic importance of marriage to our children and to our society. We call on all the makers of family law—legislators, judges, the family law bar, and legal scholars who create the climate in which other players operate—to develop a deeper understanding of and commitment to marriage as a social institution.

A prime goal of marriage and family law should be to identify new ways to support marriage as a social institution, so that each year more children are protected by the loving marital unions of their mother and father.[Emphasis added]

It is immediately obvious that whatever values are being discussed and whatever disagreement there may be over “whether and how the law should be altered to benefit same-sex couples”, there was absolute agreement that same-sex marriages are “destructive” and “contribute to the erosion of a marriage culture.” In fact, by the time that Sears commended Blankenhorn, he had become best known for his opposition to marriage equality.

Sears has also teamed up with Blankenhorn to sponsor his marriage debates with Jonathan Rouch, and to further the visibility of her own campaign to support heterosexual marriage. (Law.com)

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears said that the 48-foot-wide, 14-foot-tall billboards are one of the few things a jurist can do to battle high crime rates, high divorce rates and low numbers of fathers raising their kids.

Along with the “Get Married, Stay Married” slogan, each sign shows a happy-looking mother, father and child and one of two messages: “Children do better with parents together” or “For Children’s Sake.”

“We paid $50,000 to get about $500,000 worth of billboard space to send this vital message,” Sears said, noting that the costs of the billboards themselves were paid by the Georgia Bar Foundation and “not state money.” The billboard space was donated by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Georgia, which donates unused billboard space to charitable, civic and governmental organizations.

Sears’ comments came in an interview last week at a more substantive part of her crusade — a two-day conference on marriage for about 250 lawyers, social workers, clergy people and therapists. The event was sponsored by the high court’s commission and the New York-based Institute for American Values, which calls itself a “private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that contributes intellectually to strengthening families and civil society in the U.S. and the world.”

While Sears appears to value Blankenhorn and his premises, she has been coy on her own position on the issue. Opponents of Sears claimed that she supported gay marriage in an effort to discredit her elections, but this is not immediately evident from her writing.

Writing in the New York University Law Review in 2007, she said

Finally, before I go any further, I would like to comment briefly on the scope of this Lecture, particularly as it relates to the subject of same-sex marriage. This topic remains a deeply polarizing one for large numbers of Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation. If I were to stake out a legal position on this subject, my comments would hopelessly overshadow anything else I might say about marriage and family fragmentation. More importantly, it would be inappropriate for me, as a sitting judge, to do so. Therefore, this Lecture addresses the more basic question of whether the law should support marriage as an institution at all. The national debate over same-sex marriage raises a host of important issues, and those issues must ultimately be resolved. But as we struggle to work out a consensus, we must not put off the job of reflecting on marriage as we now have it.

Yet one cannot read any of her perspectives on marriage without immediately recognizing that Sears believes that 1) marriage is about children, 2) parents are defined as the natural biological father and the natural biological mother, 3) biological mother/father/child families deserve preference, and 4) other socially recognized structures are destructive to the special status that heterosexual marriage deserves.

We do not, of course, know the extent to which her personal views will color her decisions. But we do know that in 2006, her positions on the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in the State of Georgia left her on both sides of the issue.

She (and one other justice) opined that the one-sentence amendment was too vague to be put on the ballot because it did not adequately warn voters that civil unions were also being banned. Yet, after the election when a judge struck down the amendment, she voted with the rest of the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the ban.

More may come up on Judge Sears which will alleviate my concerns. But until it does, I am troubled by her perspectives on marriage, family, and children and fear that she may prove on the Highest Court to be a life-long opponent to marriage equality.

(hat tip to reader Matt, who brought this to our attention)

Portugal’s supreme court approves same-sex marriage bill

The Portuguese supreme court had until today to approve or reject the same-sex marriage bill forwarded to them by the President. Today they have announced that it is not unconstitutional.

IOL Diario (Google translation)

The Constitutional Court Thursday gave this ‘green light’ to the law that allows marriage between same sex, whereas the norms sent by Ben to preventive control are constitutional, reports as saying.

Judge adviser Victor Gomes was the spokesperson for the ruling, which had eleven votes, of which seven presented the declaration to vote, and two dissenting opinions.

The constitution of Portugal has a clause supporting marriage but this was deemed not to be contradictory to including same-sex couples. (tvi 24 – Google translation)

The Constitutional Court held that “the extension of marriage to same-sex ‘is consistent with the recognition and protection of the family as” fundamental element of society, emphasizing that marriage is’ open concept’, which allows different political views.

In a memo distributed to the media after the public reading of the ruling on the request for preventive control of four rules of law that allows marriage between same-sex requested by the President read that the TC concludes that the legislative initiative ‘not violates the constitutional guarantee of marriage. ”

President Cavaco Silva now has until the 28th to approve or veto the bill. The legislature is believed to have adequate votes to override a veto.

LA Times Poll: Californians support marriage equality

A new LA Times/USC poll has findings similar to last month’s PPIC poll:

Q.46 Do you think that same-sex couples should be allowed to become legally married in the state of
California?

Yes, strongly ………………………………………………………………40
Yes, not so strongly …………………………………………………..12
No, not so strongly……………………………………………………….8
No, strongly………………………………………………………………..32
(Don’t know)…………………………………………………………………6
(Refuse) ……………………………………………………………………….2

Total Yes……………………………………………………………………..52
Total No ……………………………………………………………………..40

The poll claims a margin or error of about 2.6%, but in looking at the demographics, I’m not sure that this poll is exactly representative.

Crate and Barrel’s ultimate wedded couple?

Crate and Barrel has been running an Ultimate Wedding contest in which hopeful couples have been telling a bit about themselves and their ultimate wedding in hopes of winning $100,000. The winner is determined by supporters going online and voting for their favorite couple.

The store has been pushing this promotion in its window displays and is a big part of their current image campaign. With today as the final day for votes, the competition has narrowed to two couples who far outdistance the third place possibility:

• In first place, with 21,135 votes, are Mary and Densey. Densey was a Chicago police officer who was paralyzed in an auto accident. Although they have already married in a civil ceremony, they want to have a dream ceremony in Mexico.
• In second place, with 17,565 votes, are Gregory and Jonathan. Theirs is a classic “Boy meets boy, boy falls for boy, and boys get engaged” story. They want a a simple, but elegant affair at an outdoor vineyard in the DC area, which fortunately for them will now be legal.

Although separated by over 3,000 votes and with only 9 voting hours remaining, Gregory and Jonathan are in a surge. If votes continue as they have for the past hour or so, they may pull ahead.

I have sympathy for all of the contestants. And Densey’s story touches my heart.

But I also wonder at what impact it could have on our national discussion if a nation-wide chain were to recognize for their Ultimate Wedding a couple whose nuptials are dismissed by some as an attack on all that is good and wholesome.

If you would like to be part of this effort, you can vote here.

Majority of Californians support marriage equality

For the first time, the PPIC Statewide Survey reports that a majority of Californians support same-sex marriage. 2,002 Californians were surveyed and there is a +/- 2% margin of error.

Participants were asked

“do you favor or oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to be legally married?”

50% favor
45% oppose
5% I don’t know

Various demographics supported marriage equality:

64% Democrats
55% Independents
28% Republicans
55% whites
43% Latinos

This polling suggests a 6% increase in support within the past year, which is quite significant. The survey does not report what contributed to this change in thinking and it is difficult to identify what may have happened since last March that could have led to the change.

However, if I were to guess, I think it is possible that there were two counter-acting public responses to the anti-8 rallies, marches, and protests. It may be that these public demonstrations caused some voters to realize for the first time that the gay community was upset and angry about being denied equality and caused them to consider that anti-gay votes are discriminatory. There may also have been some backlash from some voters who felt that the gay community was behaving lawlessly.

Over the past year the public image of angry marches may have diminished and those upset by it may have become calmer, while the concept of inequality and unfairness raised by the marches may have germinated and resulted in increased support, yielding a net increase. This is, of course, only speculation.

Additionally, the PPIC confirmed that Californians strongly favor allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military. A total of 75% (and a majority in every demographic) agreed.

Italian court was to rule on marriage equality today

According to gayrights.change,

Next Tuesday [today], the Italian Constitutional Court will decide whether several provisions under Italy’s civil code that currently restrict marriage to just “one man, one woman” are unconstitutional.

From Italian organization Certi Diritti, (Google translation)

On 23 March 2010 the Constitutional Court will rule on the legality of the refusal of publication of banns received by two pairs of same-sex couples who had received from their common denial of the request for publication of banns.

The municipalities are those of Venice and that of Trent, whose courts, sued by lawyers Lenford Network – Law for LGBT rights, decided to refer the decision on the constitutionality of the ban on marriage between two persons of the same sex.

If the court has published its decision, I have not been able to find it. I’ll report more when it’s known

(hat tip to reader volpi)

UPDATE: The court has postponed announcing any decision until after the Easter holidays. Considering the international attention to be paid to the Vatican over the next two weeks as Catholicism observes its most holy holiday, this may possibly be an indication of positive news for gay Italians.

Portugal marriage timeline

Rex Wockner writing for PinkPaper.com provides a good timeline of when action is required on the marriage bill in Portugal. Currently it has been forwarded to the supreme court for a review for constitutionality.

April 8: the last day that court can have completed their review

April 28: the last day for pondering the court’s response by the president (assuming they take until 4/8)

If he signs it, it becomes law. If he vetoes it, Parliament is expected to pass it again, which would then force Cavaco Silva to sign it.

Should the Constitutional Court find some problem with the law, which is considered to be unlikely, Parliament then probably would amend it to address the court’s concerns.

New Hampshire results silence NOM’s Maggie Gallagher

On March 10th, National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher was euphoric. She was joyously reporting that the residents of New Hampshire had voted to reject same-sex marriage (National Review Online)

Of the vote results reported by the Union-Leader, along with a couple from the Concord Monitor, seventeen towns approved and three rejected the article.

Voting for a marriage amendment were: Charlestown (620-305), Kingston (719-346), Milton (385-285), Littleton (912-627), Wakefield (504-242), Dunbarton (77-58), Kingston (719-346), Windham (1,428-832), Epsom (422-225), Bedford (2,783-1,040), Hampstead (1,190-499), Allenstown (383-198), Auburn, Swanzey (542-422), Stark (unanimously), Pittsburg (64-4), and Belmont.

Rejecting were Newhampton, Salisbury (30-27), and Northumberland (57-104).

This is a partial list; still looking for full electoral info.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.

To understand what this means, we have to take a step back and look at how same-sex marriage came to New Hampshire and what these town votes mean.

New Hampshire is one of two states in which the legislature passed a bill which was signed by the governor which changed the family law code to allow same-sex couples to marry. This was not due to a lawsuit or other court action but was an act of the purest representative government.

To reverse this law, anti-gay activists have a few options.

They can vote for representatives who oppose marriage equality who could then repeal the law. But while it is possible for marriage rights to appear and disappear with the change (or whim) of the elected representatives, many legislators are hesitant to play so cavalierly with the lives of their constituents. Further, the representatives are aware that changing laws back and forth create complexities and legal confusion which would both make their jobs more difficult and open them up to criticism.

They can lobby for a change in the constitution, a one-time fix. However, New Hampshire does not have a initiative process and the constitution can only be changed in two ways.

The state has a provision by which a constitutional convention can be called. Every ten years (or by a majority of both houses) the people vote on whether to call a convention (the next vote is scheduled for 2012). Then delegates are elected and a convention convened. Amendments to the constitution require a 3/5 vote of the delegates and a 2/3 vote of the people. Anti-gay activists may encourage a “yes” vote on the next constitutional convention question.

The second method for changing the constitution for both houses, by a 3/5 vote, to place an amendment on the ballot. Such an amendment would require a 2/3 affirmative vote of the electorate. And it was towards the last method that the rhetoric of the anti-gay activists was directed. NOM (among others) sought to demonstrate that it was the will of the people that they be allowed to vote on the issue. And this was the focus of their language: marriage is too important to be decided by the legislature, it should have the input of the people.

NOM was hoping that folks who were moderate or even supportive of marriage would agree that a “people’s vote” was needed. And once it was on the ballot, they would dump tens of millions of dollars (from undisclosed sources) to fund a campaign of bald-faced lies and seek to enshrine the doctrines of some religious organizations into civil law.

To put pressure on the legislature and create an impression of public support, anti-gay activists used a political mechanism that is peculiar to New England states: the town meeting, a gathering of the residents to determine town business. They sought to have the towns demand of the state that the residents be allowed to vote on marriage equality.

There are (basically) two types of town meeting. A traditional type, which is a public gathering on the second Tuesday in March, works well for small communities. And, since 1995, the state has allowed a two-part meeting (called an SB2 Meeting) in which first a deliberate session is held, which creates wording, and then residents vote through polling places. These votes occur on the second Tuesday of March, April, or May. To get a matter up for consideration at a town meeting, concerned citizens can collect twenty-five signatures on a petition.

So anti-gay activists organized to have towns pass a non-binding resolution, an “opinion of the people”, if you will, to ask the legislature to “let us vote. And using the town meeting approach was actually a pretty smart move. Cities, such as Portsmouth or Dover, don’t have a non-binding resolution process, so any results would skew towards smaller towns or rural communities where conservative sentiment was more likely to thrive. Further, those fired up to “fight the homosexual agenda” were more likely to attend than residents who weren’t much interested either way.

The best scenario for anti-gay activists would be for each town to endorse the “let us vote” effort by 2/3 of the residents. This could allow NOM to spin the results as evidence that a constitutional amendment would pass and that residents demand their rights. But success would be a majority of voters – or a majority of towns – which would allow Maggie and Brian to claim that they speak for “the people”.

Even “a majority of those towns which voted”, while meaningless, would allow Maggie a press release (for NOM it’s all about perception and spin) and a “victory”. Any result which could be stretched to suggest that the legislators were out of touch with the residents of New Hampshire.

Thus the gloating comments she made at NRO.

But it seems that Maggie forgot to comment once the “full electoral info” was found. And she has good reason not to want to discuss the decisions of the New Hampshire towns.

Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire has compiled the votes to date, and here is what he found:

Traditional meetings:

28 towns supported the anti-gay effort
61 towns did not provide enough signatures
31 towns tabled the bill, refusing to even vote on it
33 towns voted “no” on the measure
1 town flipped the effort and voted to commend the state for supporting equality

SB2 Meetings:

31 towns supported the anti-gay effort
10 towns did not provide enough signatures
14 towns amended the language in the deliberative session, killing the petition
1 town flipped the effort but failed to vote to commend the state for supporting equality

There are 11 towns yet to decide. But of the 210 towns which could have supported the efforts of the anti-gay activists, only 59 chose to do so. Few of those were by a 2/3 vote.

Of course NOM and the other participants at LetNHVote are seeking to spin this as a victory. They simply don’t count the towns in which the motion was tabled or in which the deliberative sessions killed the effort, and claim that of the towns in which the residents did decide to vote, they won a majority.

But their claims ring a little hollow. It’s a bit like celebrating because the people inside the ice cream parlor voted that they like ice cream.

And for some reason, Maggie’s chortling has turned to silence.

NOM funds DC Candidate with questionable ethics

Rev. Anthony J. Motley is a protege of Marion Barry running for City Council against gay Council Member at Large David Catania.

In February, the CityPaper looked into some of Motley’s business practices with the city and found them to be curious. It seems that Barry was lining Motley’s pockets with city money and that Motley was responding by providing personal favors to Barry including the loan of a Mercedes.

He “personally received at least $54,000 from [fiscal 2009] earmark grant recipients”—earmarks all requested by Barry.
…
Under the terms of a settlement agreement with federal prosecutors in his long-running federal tax-fraud case, Barry has to fully report his income and spending to authorities on a monthly basis in order to determine how much of his income is seized in order to pay back taxes. If Barry were to include payments on a luxury vehicle, they could demand an adjustment to Barry’s repayment schedule.

The article continues with several other instances in which Motley’s behavior either crossed or skirted the line of legality. In fact, an investigation into improprieties in Barry’s earmarks found that Motley had forged documents and engaged in self-dealing in addition to using educational funds set up for poor children to pay for political “councils” which in turn paid him. All of which suggests that not only is Anthony Motley a political ally of Marion Barry, but he appears to share both Barry’s personal taste for power and privilege and his questionable ethics.

None of which matters to the National Organization for Marriage. There is no scoundrel too shady or wactivist too hateful to be endorsed, supported, and funded by NOM. All that matters is that Motley shares NOM’s opposition to marriage equality.

As of last June, Motley was not yet on board with NOM’s agenda. At that time he was singing a different song. (WaPo)

Motley said in an interview that there are divisions in the city that he wants to eliminate: geography and race but also one between ministers and the gay and lesbian community.

Motley said he pulled together a meeting between the two groups to talk about the legalization of gay marriage. Motley, who said he has supported domestic partnerships and other gay issues in the past, said he has not decided whether he supports legalizing same-sex nuptials. “I’m evolving on that,” he said. “I have not gotten to the point that I can say definitively.”

But since NOM has a check-book (and no accountability), Motley has now evolved a position and decided that he really likes divisions after all.

So it is no surprise that NOM is funding Motley. (MetroWeekly)

Motley has accepted two campaign contributions from NOM, and another from the Committee to Elect Delano Hunter. Hunter is running for a seat to represent Ward 5. He has also been supported by NOM.

”Obviously we’re interested in electing candidates that will support traditional marriage and allowing voters of D.C. the right to have their say on the issue,” Brian Brown, executive director of NOM, says. ”Rev. Motley does.”

Sadly, is is also no surprise that NOM seems to have broken the law to do so.

According to the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance (OCF), candidates seeking election for a City Council At-Large seat may accept no more than $1,000 from one organization or individual. But Motley’s campaign contribution listings on OCF’s official web site, shows that it accepted $950 from ”The National Organization for Marriage, PPC,” on January 29, and another $950 from ”The National Organization for Marriage, Inc.” on February 1.

Brown says the two contributions were a mistake and that only one should have been made.

Perhaps it was just a reporting error. Perhaps it was a mistake and NOM accidentally gave more than they intended. Perhaps it’s all innocent.

But why is it that every time National Organization for Marriage becomes involved in a campaign, there are questionable practices or laws ignored or broken?