Reactions to Losing Marriage in Maine

Marriage Equality Closes on Opening Night : No Support from Obama, Dems

The Advocate's Kerry Eleveld sets the stage:  Last November, when Barack Obama swept into office as a one-man embodiment of the nation’s promise of equality, many LGBT Americans awoke the next morning feeling like orphaned children of the Democratic Party.  Despite his historic victory, antigay ballot measures passed in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas devastated the community.  One year later, LGBT activists had that sinking feeling again as Tuesday night bled into Wednesday morning and Maine’s same-sex marriage battle ended in a loss for equality advocates...  (Their new) call to arms might foretell a rising anger within the LGBT community over the Obama Administration's seemingly tacit acceptance of a separate and unequal status for gay relationships.

David Mixner delivers the opening monologue:  First and foremost, Enough!  We have poured over $100,000,000 in the last two years into efforts where Americans feel it is there obligation to vote on our freedom.  The entire concept is repugnant and disgusting.  That we for the last three decades have been drawn into this game of "this is politics" and fighting these ballot box horrors so that maybe by in five, ten or twenty years we will have enough victories to force our federal government to protect our freedom is simply not acceptable anymore.  Imagine the good we could have done with all that money...

Imagine the civil rights movement we could have built if we had the leadership that was willing to think out of the box and put it on the line.  Second, call this campaign against us what it is - Gay Apartheid. ... President Obama standing on the sidelines in Maine and Washington was appalling.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, has become a a supporting player in our fight for Equality... No, not even that.  He's a walk-on character, full of self-importance and signifying little.  (Joe says his piece here.)

Enter Queerty, Stage Left:  We're told to look to organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD to see what can be done to further gay civil rights.  Except these two organizations, and their brethren, were horrifyingly silent on Maine.  Yes, there were "partners" with PME, and sure, they sent out email blasts to supporters — to raise money for their own organizations.  But wait, what's this?  Our inbox shows the most recent email from HRC's Joe Solmonese appeared on Oct. 28 — to celebrate good friend Barack Obama's signature on the Matthew Shepard Act.  There's been nothing about Maine's fight.

Enter Andrew Sullivan, Stage Right:  It is staggering to me that the message discipline from the DNC is so tight that they even forbade OFA from telling Obama-supporters which way to vote on the referendum.  It's one more sign, I fear, that the Democratic establishment's opposition to marriage equality is real; and the president's peeps are increasingly determined to do what they can keep us from the right to civil marriage.

Over at Democratic Underground, MadFloridian contributes to the dialogue:  I find it sad that our party could not openly and honestly support the rights of gays in Maine.  Yet they were fearful to do so.  They refused to donate to the cause...  The religious right stands for what they believe, and they do not hesitate to be open about it.  They don't fret and worry what we will think about them.  I feel sorrow for those in Maine affected by yesterday's vote.  I feel anger that our party is so fearful of offending the religious right that they will not stand up for the rights of gays and women.

Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny delivers the final soliloquy:  Count on it, in 40 years we'll all be talking about you the way we now talk about the idiots who opposed equality for African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. The morons who maintained that women really shouldn't be allowed to go to law school or medical school. And the larger group who stood around and did nothing, said nothing, didn't tell their friends off.  I hope your grandchildren read about this in school, come home and ask, with an attitude of disbelief, what you did about the injustice. You did something, didn't you grandma, grandpa?  Your well-deserved destiny is the shame and disgust that comes from your loved ones.

The curtain comes down, no one takes a bow, the audience leaves, the theatre is dark.

Comments

[Aggie, Fair Haven, Vt.]

Maine relies a great deal on both tourism dollars (they won't be getting mine anymore) and also on East Coast sales of farm-raised mussels; I will look for the ones from P.E.I. now. It may not be much, but if everyone who cared about this issue boycotted Maine products, it would send some kind of message, anyway. You didn't buy stuff from, or go to, apartheid-era South Africa, did ya?