Florida Agenda

AUGUSTA, MAINE – Dozens of conservative Christian churches put the arm on parishioners for the second Sunday in row, collecting donations to oppose the November ballot initiative to legalize same sex marriage. Approximately 150 churches participated in the special Father’s Day plate offerings, which were intended to raise money for the Protect Marriage Maine political action committee.

“We have intentionally chosen Father’s Day to emphasize the stark differences between those who support Biblical marriage, and those who are attempting to redefine marriage,” Pastor Bob Emrich, chairman of Protect Marriage Maine, wrote last week. “We believe God designed and utilizes the differences between men and women to establish the ideal environment to raise a family. The other side believes moms and dads are replaceable by generic adults.”

According to documents filed with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, as of June 1, Mainers United for Marriage, the umbrella organization for supporters of marriage equality, had raised close to $359,000.

By comparison, opponents Protect Marriage Maine had raised about $10,000. Marriage equality supporters have since raised more than $120,000, to match a $100,000 contribution from Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.

By CLIFF DUNN

AUGUSTA, ME – According to confidential strategy documents made public last week, officials with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) considered a plan to manipulate Latino and black groups—two core constituencies within the Democratic Party—into political opposition against LGBT rights organizations in general, and gay marriage in particular. The strategy also called for the recruitment of children in same-sex families in an effort to coax admissions from them on video of familial unhappiness.

The memos, which were released by court order on March 26, detail a well conceived strategy for manipulating Hispanic and African American opinions into opposing marriage equality for LGBT persons. They also suggest connecting marriage equality to unpopular topics including pornography.

The documents portray the Democratic Party leadership as “increasingly inclined to privilege the concerns of gay rights groups over the values of African-Americans,” presaging the strategy to play upon cultural differences.

One memo urges gay marriage opponents to “find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks–two key Democratic constituencies,” reads another of the NOM memoranda. The memo also lays out a social engineering scheme to “interrupt” the assimilation of Hispanics into mainstream American culture as a means of fracturing Latino support for marriage equality.

“Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values?” posited one of the court released NOM memos. “We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity,” adding that this would become for Hispanic Americans “a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

NOM’s memos also outline a strategy in which President Barack Obama would be depicted as a “social radical.”

The documents and memorandum were unsealed by Maine court officials as part of a legal challenge to the state’s financial disclosure laws. The courts must also determine whether NOM, the nation’s largest opponent of same sex marriage, must release the names of donors to its 2009 campaign that successfully banned gay marriage in the Pine Tree State.

“With the veil lifted, Americans everywhere can now see the ugly politics that the National Organization for Marriage traffics in every day,” said Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBT rights organization.

“While loving gay and lesbian couples seek to make lifelong commitments, NOM plays racial politics, tries to hide donors and makes up lies about people of faith,” added Solmonese.

Julian Bond, the former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also denounced NOM’s strategy.

“NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination,” condemned Bond, a veteran of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. “Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, refused to back down from his organization’s opposition to marriage equality for all Americans. “Gay marriage advocates have attempted to portray same-sex marriage as a civil right,” said Brown. “This claim is patently false.”

“Gay marriage is not a civil right, and we will continue to point this out in written materials such as those released in Maine,” Brown added.

“We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors to fight for our most fundamental institution: marriage.”

Same-sex marriage supporters have gotten the issue placed on Maine’s November ballot. Although the court-released documents contain detailed information on NOM’s Maine campaign, they do not list the names of financial donors, among them three who contributed over one million dollars each in 2009 to defeat gay marriage.

AUGUSTA, ME – Supporters of same-sex marriage say they are confident that voters in Maine are ready to make the Pine Tree State the nation’s first to legalize marriage equality by popular referendum.

Although five states are expected to contain marriage equality questions on their November ballots, Maine is the only one where the initiative has been framed by supporters of the issue. In 2009, lawmakers approved a same-sex marriage bill that was signed into law by then-Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat.

Baldacci, a Roman Catholic, became the first governor to sign a marriage equality law that had not been previously courtordered. That status was reversed less than six months later, when gay marriage was overturned 53-47 percent in a statewide referendum on Nov. 3, 2009.

In spite of that defeat, marriage equality advocates believe that the past three years have seen a drastic change in voter opinions, and have successfully petitioned to add the question to this November’s ballot.

Last week, Raleigh, North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling released the results of an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) poll of Maine voters that concerned the issue, with the following results reported:

“It looks like Maine voters will reverse their 2009 decision and legalize gay marriage in the state this fall. 54% think that gay marriage should be legal to only 41% who think it should be illegal. And when we asked about the issue using the exact language voters will see on the ballot this fall, they say they’re inclined to support the referendum by a 47-32 margin.

There’s some indication that the exact ballot language is confusing people a little at this point. Only 67% of those who support gay marriage in general say they’ll vote yes while 12% say they’ll not and 21% are not sure. At the same time, just 60% of those who oppose gay marriage generally say they’ll vote against the proposed referendum, while 24% say they’ll vote for it and 16% are not sure. My guess is at the end of the day voters will see this as a straight referendum on gay marriage regardless of what the language on the ballot says — and the 54/41 number bodes well for pro-equality voters.

Republicans’ opinions are pretty much the same as they were in 2009. But Democrats’ support for gay marriage has increased slightly, from 71% to 78%. And more importantly independents have gone from voting against gay marriage 52/46 three years ago to now supporting it by a 57/36 margin.”