EQME Says They Have Signatures For 2012 Marriage Initiative

Game on! Equality Maine has announced that they have gathered twice as many signatures as needed to put an initiative on the November 2012 which would legalize marriage equality.

The specific ballot question language is:

Do you favor a law allowing marriage licenses for same-sex couples that protects religious freedom by ensuring no religion or clergy be required to perform such a marriage in violation of their religious beliefs?

The Portland Press-Herald reports:

Betsy Smith of EqualityMaine says 396 volunteers collected more than 36,000 signatures on Election Day, bringing the total number to 100,000. That's more than enough petitions to get gay marriage onto the statewide ballot if the group chooses to do so. Smith says the group will make its decision on a referendum in January. 

Maine is currently the only state in New England that doesn't allow either gay marriage or civil unions. Maine lawmakers approved a gay marriage law, but it was overturned by a statewide referendum in 2009.

Recent polls in Maine have shown support for marriage equality at 53%. Hopefully Maine goes forward with a pro-marriage equality measure in 2012, which will at least counter-balance the anti-marriage equality measures in Minnesota and North Carolina.

POLL: Support for Marriage Equality in Maine

Well, well! Despite being rejected at the polls on election day 2009 when Maine's Question 1 (voiding that state's recently passed marriage equality law) was approved by voters 53% to 47%, marriage equality is now enjoying majority support in the state as the 2012 federal elections approach, and Equality Maine considers going back to the ballot with a marriage equality measure.

A new poll from PPP shows that 51% of Maine respondents think that same-sex marriage should be legal, but before one gets too confident, I would point out that this is within the margin of error of ±3.8 percentage points of this poll (673 voters contacted between 10/28-10/31/2011).So, it is true that more Maine voters support marriage equality than oppose it, but the poll does not indicate majority support for marriage equality in Maine yet. Hopefully, that will be the case one year from now, on election day 2012!

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Names Of Referendum 71 Signers Released

Finally! After losing a Supreme Court decision Doe v. Reed last year, the heterosexual supremacists who forced the voters of Washington State to vote on whether that state's comprehensive domestic partnership law should go into effect have lost their battle to keep secret the names of the voters who signed the petitions to get the measure on the ballot.

A federal judge ordered the state of Washington to release the names on Monday, and the Secretary of State released a DVD with 138, 000 names of petitioners to the press.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

The 138,000 people who signed petitions to force a vote on a 2009 domestic partnership law are unlikely to face harassment if their names are disclosed a judge said Friday while ordering the release of signatures.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle said the petitioners who advocated for privacy provided only a few experiences of indecent statements and other uncomfortable conversations. Also, there was only speculation that those incidents were connected to the issue, he said.

Disclosure would become the exception, rather than the rule, if just a few instances of harassment were used as the standard for preventing the release of names, Settle said.

And the heterosexual supremacists lost the referendum campaign in 2009 as well. Washington voters approved the referendum (upheld Washington's comprehensive domestic partnership law) and it has been in effect since November 2009.

Lesbian Mayor of Houston Tweets Re-Election Bid

Annise Parker, who became the first openly LGBT mayor of a major United States city (Houston) in December 2009, has announced what everyone has known for a pretty long time: she's running for re-election.

The Houston Chronicle (which endorsed Parker in her election two years ago) covered the story like this:

Houston Mayor Annise Parker filed the papers Thursday to put her name on the November ballot, a move that so far appears to be a formality on her path toward a second two-year term.

"I'm going to be a better mayor in the second term because of what I've learned in the first term," Parker declared during a visit to her campaign headquarters on Allen Parkway.

The mayor described her first term as one in which she often had to react instead of plan and shape. The economy depleted city revenue, leading to painful spending cuts. Voters handed Parker controversial mandates to initiate a monthly drainage fee and to turn off the city's red-light cameras. She compared her attempts to change the culture of a 21,000-employee city bureaucracy to turning an ocean liner. Even the weather has necessitated a response, and Parker recently imposed mandatory water restrictions on the 2.1 million people she governs.

In a second term, Parker said, she hopes to create more and respond less.

"This is a city that has tremendous potential, and I want to move the conversation to tapping into that potential, to being a cleaner, greener city, to being a city with more jobs and opportunity for everybody," Parker said.

Since the advent of term limits in 1991, no incumbent mayor has lost an election. Nor has any even had a close call in their first re-election.

Go, Annise, Go! The election is November 8, 2011. Parker has more than $2.3 million on hand and no opponents with more than $5,000. She is term-limited to 3-terms in office, so she would still have to be re-elected in 2013 to spend the maximum 6 years as Mayor of Houston.

Interestingly, in 2013 there may be another lesbian running to be Mayor of an even bigger city: New York City.