Equality On Trial

News round-up: Prop 8, Amendment 1 in North Carolina, and more

April 16, 2012

Marriage equality Prop 8 Prop 8 trial Right-wing

By Scottie Thomaston

- Fred Karger, the first openly gay GOP candidate for president, is filing ethics charges against the National Organization for Marriage. The new claim is based on Romney’s secretive $10,000 donation to the organization. From the press release which can be read here:

“NOM has once again conspired to hide its contributions, and this time it was Mitt Romney’s,” stated Karger. “The recently unsealed documents (coincidentally from my last campaign ethics violation complaint against NOM in Maine) revealed that NOM received the $10,000 on October 14, 2008 from Romney’s Alabama PAC “Free and Strong America.” That was only 3 weeks before the Prop 8 election in which NOM was heavily involved. Funny that NOM appears to have reported all the contributions that it received before and after Romney’s, but failed to report Governor Romney’s $10,000 to ban gay marriage in California.”?

- Rob Reiner, who appeared on The Stephanie Miller Show on Current TV, says he is confident the Supreme Court will overturn Proposition 8. He says we’re winning the war:

“Years from now we’ll look back and say, ‘What was all the fuss about?’ People will look back and say, ‘You mean there was a time that women couldn’t vote? There was a time that blacks couldn’t vote or blacks couldn’t marry whites?’ I mean, we look at those things as ridiculous now and we will look at this as being ridiculous but right now we’re in the middle of a fight and we have to keep fighting.”

“We’re going to win this, but we’ve got to keep our foot on the gas.”

On the possibility of the case going to the Supreme Court, Reiner said: “They have upheld gay rights historically in Lawrence v. Texas, in Romer [v. Evans] case. And we believe that they will uphold us in this.”

- On the contractor executive order front, gay activists are launching a “We Can’t Wait” campaign to pressure President Obama to reconsider his decision not to sign it. Meanwhile, Metro Weekly got a statement from the White House saying that:

White House spokesman Shin Inouye tells Metro Weekly today that “the time is right for a comprehensive legislative approach” to address anti-LGBT workplace discrimination — a reference to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — although he added that “the Administration hasn’t taken any options off the table.”

- Pam Spaulding writes about a new $100,000 matching donation campaign to help defeat anti-gay Amendment 1 in North Carolina. She will also feature an interview with the straight ally responsible for this effort.

- Despite popular framing of the issue, opponents of marriage equality don’t actually think their marriages are harmed by the ability of gays and lesbians to marry.

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