|
LASTEST NEWS
|
CALIFORNIA GAY MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF |
|
From Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO - Gay marriage advocates on Monday launched a campaign to try to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban, hoping to become the first U.S. state to convince voters to approve gay people's right to wed.
In the five states where gay marriage is permitted -- Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- the right was achieved through court and legislative action.
In every state where the issue has been put before the voters, gay marriage has been rejected. Last year California passed its ban, known as Proposition 8, and voters in Maine overturned a state law allowing same-sex marriages two weeks ago.
Read more...
|
|
|
PROPONENTS OF REPEALING PROP. 8 TURN TO WEB TO QUALIFY MEASURE |
|
From The Sacramento Bee
Supporters of legalizing same-sex marriage have launched an online signature-gathering campaign for putting an initiative to repeal Proposition 8 on the 2010 ballot.
The initiative, backed by a coalition called Love Honor Cherish, was approved for signature gathering today. Proponents must collect nearly 700,000 valid voter signatures by mid-April 2010 in order to ask voters to overturn Prop. 8, the 2008 ballot measure banning same sex marriage that passed with 52 percent of the vote
Organizers billed the new Web effort, www.SignForEquality.com, as the first time social networking has been used for an all-volunteer drive to qualify an initiative for the ballot. Visitors to the site can download petitions to sign, view volunteer training videos and connect with other volunteers and signature gathering efforts in their area.
Read more...
|
|
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ACTIVISTS SEEK REPEAL OF CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 8 |
|
From The Christian Science Monitor
LOS ANGELES - The battle is on to repeal California’s Prop. 8 — which activists hope starts a national domino effect in the nearly 30 states that have banned same-sex marriage.
A coalition of 40 groups has taken the first legal step for voters to be able to overturn the measure in November 2010. Thursday, the groups submitted ballot language that will place the measure on the ballot in the state’s next general election. Within weeks they intend to be canvassing the state to gather 700,000 valid signatures needed by April to qualify the measure for the ballot.
The proposed measure will read, in part: “To provide for fairness in the government’s issuance of marriage licenses, Section 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution is hereby amended to read as follows: Marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, creed, ancestry, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation or religion.”
Read more...
|
|
|
ONE YEAR AFTER PROP 8, PUSH FOR MARRIAGE CONTINUES |
|
From Bay Area Reporter
One year ago this week, marriage equality advocates in San Francisco and around the country were shocked by the passage of Proposition 8, which eliminated same-sex couples' right to marry in California.
In the weeks after the measure passed with 52 percent of the vote, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to express their agony and anger. Last month a march for LGBT equality in Washington, D.C. drew an estimated 100,000 people.
This week, interfaith services were held around the state in advance of the vote in Maine and to mark the passage of Prop 8.
In Oakland, about 75 people gathered at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church Monday, November 2 for a service of song and reflection. The Reverend Roland Stringfellow talked about "people whose hearts are broken."
READ MORE...
|
|
CALIFORNIA GAY MARRIAGE GROUPS LAUNCH BALLOT FIGHT |
|
From Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO - Gay rights activists hoping to win back the right to marry in California submitted a ballot proposal on Thursday for the November 2010 election -- a date deep-pocketed advocates have said is too soon.
Californians in November voted to ban same-sex marriage after courts made it legal in the spring. Advocates ever since have been debating when to challenge the ban, known as Prop 8, in the state, which is closely divided on the issue despite a social liberal reputation.
The Los Angeles group Love Honor Cherish filed a proposed state constitutional amendment that repeals the gay marriage ban and says churches would not be forced to perform any marriage.
READ MORE ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1 of 2 |
|
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ’Wait.’ But . . . when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; . . . when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; . . . when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From a Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
