Washington Blade on Marriage Referendum and the DNC
Someone has to tell me why it's nasty to seek a referendum on the ballot, but it's ok to fight to take it off. The Washington Blade,
The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, assisted a gay group in Illinois with its efforts to block an anti-gay marriage amendment from going before voters in November and has adopted a five-point plan for fighting similar ballot measures in other states, according DNC spokesperson Danien LaVera.The DNC really ought to have listened to Kerry, quoted in the same article,
“As we move forward in this election year, we will help in a variety of ways,” LaVera said.
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LaVera said the DNC’s involvement in the Illinois ballot fight was an example of how cooperation between the DNC and local or state gay groups have proven to be “highly successful.”
Rick Garcia, director of Equality Illinois, could not be reached for comment.
[***]
John Marble, spokesperson for National Stonewall Democrats, said officials with Equality Illinois and gay Democratic activists in the state were “very pleased” with the DNC’s help. Marble said the DNC also contributed $10,000 to the petition challenge effort.
LaVera said a DNC policy that prohibits disclosure of “internal strategy” prevents him from commenting on any contribution the DNC makes in electoral efforts like the Illinois ballot fight.
When the state party in Massachusetts officially threw its support behind gay marriage, Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, criticized the decision. He is on record favoring the type of statewide ballot measures banning gay marriage that the DNC is now challenging.
8 comments:
To answer your question posed at the start of your comments, the reasons for both are the same. These referenda are designed to help bring out the votes of the right-wing (or would you call them fascist) elements of our society, as well as swing the votes of those gullible enough to heed their propraganda as a truly vital concern of the day.
Getting these B.S. proposals on the ballot can help turn the outcome of races for a variety of other offices, in favor of candidates who do not deserve to hold public office. Therefore, keeping this garbage off the ballot is in the public interest, in my humble opinion.
Bravo to the first comment. Put another way, those ballot measures do NOTHING to serve Democracy in the United States, or the Democratic party. Get it through your skull, eh?
Kerry a BS fascist?
BB asked, "Someone has to tell me why it's nasty to seek a referendum on the ballot, but it's ok to fight to take it off."
....Bill, You forgot a word. Let me explain.
It is every citizen's right to seek an advisory referendum and should they (and their friends) obtain enough legitimate signatures to petition to have it on the ballot, good for them. That's how democracy works.
That means a legitimate petition to have the hate-based Intolerance Adv. Referendum placed on the ballot is ok, whether Rick Garcia likes it or not.
It also means, by extension, that a legitimate petition to have a Green Party slate run for statewide office is ok, whether Joyce Morrison likes it or not.
The key word here?
Legitimate.
All the money in the Roeser gang's little intolerant world can't buy legit signatures from actual voters...
You should be asking, "Someone has to tell me why it's nasty to seek a LEGITIMATE referendum on the ballot, but it's ok to fight to take it off."
(Besides, if the progressives working to place an advisory referendum about health care security on the ballot had succeeded in obtaining enough signatures, don't you think conservatives would be sitting next to Rick Garcia challenging that petition? Be honest.)
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That said, the tone of the Intolerance Advisory Referendum's very question is nasty in and of itself.
Nasty is as nasty does -- and LaBarbera, Roeser, et al were pretty nasty on this one. But with LaBarbera investigating so much perversion up close and personal, maybe some of the nasty is rubbing off on his manly self... ;)
LaBarbera investigating the perversion is wierd but so is the perversion, I did not know and almost could not believe, except it was right there some of the things that go, really strange
The referendum requirements are ridiculous
In every state, (is it 19?) that there was a referendum it passed
in Alabam like 80% and even passed in more liberal states like Oregon and California
so this is not fringe
it is popular and mainstream
sorry if some of the supporters may not be but that is any issue or movement right or left
NW,
The key word is right and my question is why is it nasty to exrcise the right to call for a referendum (nasty enough to post the names in Mass) yet it's a noble thing to exercise the right to contest the call for a referendum.
It's an undisputable right for sure; it's just the frame around the dispute (using current progressive mumbo jumbo) I wonder about.
The issue that could swing me one way or the other on this vote, is what would prevent a situation as happened with Catholic Charities in Mass. They had to drop out of the adoption business because they refused to cross Catholic Doctrine on placing kids in same-sex households.
If voting to allow same-sex marriage means imposing rules on Churches, I'd vote against them.
It's this nuts-and-bolts discussion that's missing from the whole debate. I raise it, and just get told I'm bigot, homophobe, closet gay, etc... --oddly by folks who aren't gay; just extreme partisans-- but the questions never really answered.
Bill,
Discrimination is discrimination. In the eyes of the law we're all equal (or at least should be).
Doesn't matter if you're Catholic, Baptist, Adventist, or atheist -- you shouldn't be discriminated against.
Doesn't matter if you're man or woman, gay or hetero -- you shouldn't be discriminated against.
Doesn't matter if you're white, black, Latino, Asian, or any other ethnicity -- you should be discriminated against.
America is about equality. If a private group is performing a public function (especially so if using public money) they cannot be allowed, in the eyes of the law, to be discriminatory to anyone in the public which is requiring let alone funding those functions.
On the other hand, if a private group is performing private functions using private money the courts have demonstrated a degree of acceptance for discrimination within the Bill of Rights. Witness the KKK holding racist rallies; the Boy Scouts' organization discriminating against gay scout leaders; or Catholic Churches not wanting to perform gay marriages... These are all private groups doing private functions with private dollars.
(And lest any conservative reactionaries out there get any bright ideas, I am most certainly not equating fine, upstanding groups like Catholics or Boy Scouts to repulsive groups like the KKK... I was simply pointing out the courts' acceptance of what could be considered dicriminatory practices.)
Defining an institution is discrimination by definition.
It's obvious but here it is by Richard John Neuhaus,
Is marriage between one man and one woman “restrictive”? Of course it is. Just as the definition of any institution, or anything else for that matter, is restrictive. It is this and therefore it is not that.
If you want equality. If you want no restrictions, we should drop a definition of marriage completly.
The abolition of marriage was once part of the leftist's platform. Emma Goldman's describtion widely excepted during those Free Love days of not so long ago. Agree or not, she certainly proposed something equal and without discrimination.
Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, how ever, woman's premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.
Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."
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