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Maine Won't Discriminate/Gay Rights
Aug. 16th, 2005 04:36 pmI'm spamming, kind of. Deal with it. This is important to me.
In MARCH 2005...
a strong bipartisan majority of the Legislature passed a law that protects all Maine citizens from discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, credit, accommodations and education. (MWD.org)
However, conservative groups like the Christian Civic League of Maine subsequently took it upon themselves to begin collecting the 60,000 signatures necessary in order to enact a Peoples Veto, which would stop the law in its tracks and require the people of the state of Maine to vote on the issue.
This is not the gay community asking for special priveleges, and certainly not marriage -- it is simply the gay community asking for the same rights that everyone else already has, and yet, the CCL and others successfully collected all the signatures they need to stop the law from being passed. It is now up to the people of Maine to decide whether or not it is fair to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation in terms of basic rights -- education, employment and housing, most notably -- already afforded to all others in the state of Maine.
And that's where Maine Won't Discriminate comes in. Please join MWD if you feel that discrimination in the state of Maine is wrong. Even closer to home, you can simply join the MWD MySpace group or the MWD LJ community to get your voice heard.
Every voice -- and vote -- counts. In the 1997 vote on this same issue, the law was set to be repealed by a 2% margin; in the 2000 vote, the anti-gay-rights-voting majority won by an even smaller margin of 0.8% (Portland Press Herald, June 2005). So please, do what you can, because everything counts.
In MARCH 2005...
However, conservative groups like the Christian Civic League of Maine subsequently took it upon themselves to begin collecting the 60,000 signatures necessary in order to enact a Peoples Veto, which would stop the law in its tracks and require the people of the state of Maine to vote on the issue.
This is not the gay community asking for special priveleges, and certainly not marriage -- it is simply the gay community asking for the same rights that everyone else already has, and yet, the CCL and others successfully collected all the signatures they need to stop the law from being passed. It is now up to the people of Maine to decide whether or not it is fair to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation in terms of basic rights -- education, employment and housing, most notably -- already afforded to all others in the state of Maine.
And that's where Maine Won't Discriminate comes in. Please join MWD if you feel that discrimination in the state of Maine is wrong. Even closer to home, you can simply join the MWD MySpace group or the MWD LJ community to get your voice heard.
Every voice -- and vote -- counts. In the 1997 vote on this same issue, the law was set to be repealed by a 2% margin; in the 2000 vote, the anti-gay-rights-voting majority won by an even smaller margin of 0.8% (Portland Press Herald, June 2005). So please, do what you can, because everything counts.
