Friday, October 5, 2007

More goods news on these dreary days

Update on the unconscionable effort to revoke recently passed laws that grant equal rights to gays in Oregon: Try again, assholes. It's great news for people who strongly believe that the standards of one religion do not have a place in the law books, and for people who continue to battle the myth that this great nation can somehow be benefited by religious lawmaking:
SALEM — With few signatures to spare, gay rights opponents say it will take a miracle for their referendum effort to succeed in blocking two new gay rights laws from taking effect Jan. 1.

“We are still full of hope. But it’s going to be very close,” former state Sen. Marylin Shannon said Friday as state election officials completed a preliminary tally of signatures submitted for the two proposed referrals.

With the petition signatures now going to county clerks for checking, it appears doubtful that there are enough signatures to send the referral measures to the November 2008 ballot — a prospect that heartens gay rights backers.

“We certainly hope that Oregon won’t have to put these two laws on hold for almost a full year,” said John Hummelof Basic Rights Oregon, the state’s largest gay rights advocacy group.

The referendum campaign by the social conservative and church groups is aimed at derailing laws passed by the 2007 Legislature to legalize domestic partnerships for same-sex couples and ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

A preliminary tally by state elections officials indicated there were 60,531 signatures for the measure to force an election vote on the domestic partnership law.

County clerks will have until Oct. 26 to verify that at least 55,179 of those signatures are valid to trigger an election. That would require a validity rate of 91 percent, which has been reached just once in recent years.

The effort to sidetrack the anti-discrimination law faces an even taller hurdle, since the state’s preliminary count showed 59,751 signatures, meaning that 92 percent of those signatures would have to be deemed valid.

As I've said before, the discrimination lobby uses God to justify its pathetic attempts at legislating an oppressive Christian morality on U.S. citizens. How can I as an American stand by as these groups corrupt our ability to grant human rights? This is not an issue of gay or straight — this is an issue of freedom in America. This is an issue of who we allow to decide our morality. You can bet that if somebody were trying to pass a bill that denied the rights of Christians, I would be the first one in line to fight it.

As such, we must continue to fight this, with a banner of open-mindedness, and we must prevail before we are reduced to a backwater bastion for illogical and demonstrably hurtful legislation.

Our very humanity — and future — depend on it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good post.