Foes file papers to launch people's veto (Maine) - updated comprehensive article

[fight4my3sons]

<Opponents of gay marriage wasted no time in filing the paperwork to launch a people's veto, getting a completed application to the Secretary of State's Office on Thursday. The Rev. Bob Emrich, a founder of the Maine Marriage Alliance, filed the document.

Opponents now need to collect 55,087 signatures by mid-September to put a question on the Nov. 3 ballot asking voters to overturn the law. The mechanics of getting those signatures are fairly simple: Volunteers will spread out across the state and ask people to sign petitions.>



<On Thursday, the National Organization for Marriage announced it would help the Maine Marriage Coalition obtain a people's veto.

"NOM stands foursquare with our colleagues in Maine to give voters the ability to overturn this misguided legislation by referendum," Executive Director Brian Brown said in a written statement. "We will devote staff, volunteers and resources to this battle in Maine.

"Marriage means a man and a woman," Brown said, "and we will work hard to ensure that voters in Maine have the ability to do what voters in every other state where they have had a chance have done, and stand up for marriage as we have always known it."

The group raised more than $3 million in last year's successful Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California and is now running a $1.5 million nationwide ad campaign designed to recruit 2 million activists to support its cause.>



<Sarah E. Reece, project director for organizing and training at the Washington, D.C.-headquartered National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, said her group has worked with Equality Maine and would continue to do so through the summer.

Equality Maine is the state's largest political advocacy group for gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

To date, the task force's foundation has given $82,000 to Equality Maine to hire its first statewide organizer and recruit and train volunteers to talk with voters. It has helped with training, sent organizers to launch a field program and provided $20,000 in seed money to hire nine field organizers.

Scott Davenport, managing director of the New York-based Freedom to Marry coalition, said his group also has been working with Equality Maine and its partners. He doesn't expect the level of outside interest in Maine to match what was seen last year in California, but said there will be some.>



<In past gay-rights referendums in Maine, each side has spent roughly $1 million. Both sides expect spending in this year's battle to be more in the range of $4 million to $6 million.>

<Betsy Smith, executive director of Equality Maine, said the gay-marriage coalition has been talking to voters about the issue for the past 18 months or so.
Smith said she expects continued support from national groups, but mainly along the lines of organizational help. "They give us a little bit of money. Mostly they share strategies with us," she said.

Smith also said she expects funds for the campaign to come from small and midlevel donors, at roughly the $25 level.>


http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=255235&ac=PHnws


EqualityMaine site:

http://equalitymaine.org/

[MADem]

1. Oh jeeeeez.

I hope half the opposition signatures they get are from people like Heywood Yablowme and Ophelia Thigh.

You'd think these nitwits would see the BUSINESS opportunities that this law change represents--wedding bookings, reception bookings, new home purchases...it's a frigging win-win.

:eyes:

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Isn't this the typical self-righteous way of wasting time and money? I've often thought about how

much good could be done with the millions and millions of dollars that the Right spends trying to overturn the laws and the cost of defending against them. Look at the 'pro-lifers' and the money they have spent in state and federal cases, trying only to get their beliefs into laws. This is exactly the same waste of money. Maine passed a law, now get over it.

[greeneyedboy]

3. "People's veto" my @$$. Let's call it what it is: tyranny of the majority. n/t