The O gave some good pub this morning to Basic Rights Oregon, the GLBT advocacy group who have announced that they will be spending the next three years leading up to Election Day 2012 attempting to have Measure 36, "One Man One Woman," repealed. The ballot measure constitutionally limiting the rights of marriage to heterosexuals was passed eight five years ago, at the height of the political wave attempting to preemptively ban efforts to grant marriage equality. But BRO thinks the time is ripe to ask again:
Basic Rights will kick off the first phase of a public education campaign with rallies Monday night in Portland, Tuesday night in Bend and Wednesday evening in Eugene.
The group will encourage gay and lesbian couples to reach out to their neighbors in a conversation on "why marriage matters and how it impacts their daily lives to be excluded from the freedom to marry," said Frazzini.
The group expects to send representatives to speak to churches and civic groups, she said, and it has hired two organizers who will travel the state and make 1,000 short, two-minute videos featuring gay and lesbian Oregonians talking about why marriage is important to them. The videos will be posted on various web sites and e-mailed to residents.
Evan Wolfson, founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, a New York City-based organization fighting for same-sex marriage, will speak at all of the Basic Rights kick-off events.
Marriage "is one of the most important statements we make about who we are," he said. "It is so important to commitment and love that most people wear the symbol of it on their hands."
People's attitudes about gay marriage change when they know gay couples, he said.
Now's a good time to mention that tonight's event in PDX has been moved to the Vanport Room of Smith Memorial Hall at PSU. (I hope they moved it to a bigger room and not a smaller one; click the link to RSVP and for more info).
IS this a smart move? Is it the right time to begin pressing for equality in Oregon, less than a decade after 57% of voting Oregonians (the lowest winning percentage in any of the states that voted in 2004, it should be said) pretty clearly indicated they were against it? I'm going to say yes, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, intervening events have transpired, particularly in the last year or so, that have changed the game from one of defense to a more offense-based position for seekers of marriage equality. The number of states with the full freedom to marry threatens requiring another hand to count, and other localities like NY and DC have made it clear they will honor those marriages in their own jurisdictions. Given that the sky has not yet fallen in the heartland of Iowa, discerning voters might eventually realize that apocalypse is NOT in fact the inevitable outcome of Adam and Steve.
Part and parcel of that time elapse is demographics: simply put, the younger you are the less likely you are to be against marriage equality, whether by virtue of your active support for it, or simply not giving a rip. The younger generation has benefitted from being exposed to gays and gay culture in a much more open environment, even as homosexuals continue to be discriminated against, harrassed and even assaulted and killed for who they are. It's nearly impossible for detractors to convince young voters that they should care; they simply don't see the threat. Even something like watching the movie MILK is shocking to them--people actually got arrested for drinking in a gay bar? WTF?
The final reason for me is the general state of the political pendulum--we're in a progressive wax, such as it is, and we know there are real opportunities to move forward on sensible legislation with a majority of the electorate...because the far right has gone absolutely batshit crazy. This flatly does NOT happen among people secure in their beliefs that the swing of history is with them; rather it is usually born of deep insecurity and fear that indeed things are irretrievably slipping away.
The problem with that perspective is, the scared and insecure people are shouting and yelling and saying things that just don't hold up for most regular folks. It looks like hysterics rather than a reasoned argument against (which isn't surprising, because the craziest thing about the whole anti-gay movement is that it's 100% bereft of rational arguments that can be made for it), and that simply indicates to the masses that any fears are probably unfounded or motivated by sensibilities most Americans don't share.
Interestingly, the Human Rights Coalition, of which Evan Wolfson is a leader* the most prominent and well-connected GLBT advocacy group, is known to many in the GLBT community as a somewhat plodding, moderate, work-within-the-system organization that has the ear of Washington and would like to keep it that way without making waves. The younger, more activist gay communities would like action now, nationally, on things like Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act.
But ironically, it's at the national level where HRC is typically focused, and if anything is to get done at that level it's HRC's resources you'd want to tap. By contrast, BRO is firmly in the state-by-state camp, figuring that as with many social rights movements in this country, the Snowball Effect will apply. Massachusetts' pioneering marriage law would seem to substantiate that premise; there's almost no question that having MA as an example has made the job easier in subsequent states, and at some point a critical mass is reached where national policy becomes the next obvious step. It's hodgepodge and necessarily parochial to start, but the eventual dividends can be much higher.
Equality in 2012! Remember it.
*Wolfson is in fact the head of Freedom to Marry, not HRC. I do very weird things when I hear Evan Wolfson's name: I think of Howard Wolfson, advisor to Hillary Clinton during her Presidential run. Why this somehow forces me to continually perceive of Evan as the guy from HRC when Howard never was and isn't even gay, I really can't say. Duly corrected, welcome to my neurosis.
Update-- Just out from Just Out, a nod to the "organizers" of the event, who even JO doesn't appear to know. So I stand corrected about BRO's involvement; it would appear that they--like everyone else--just showed up.
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Courtesy of the blog from Just Out, the national gay-issues magazine based in Portland, a quick review of yesterday evening's highly impromptu and decentrally organized rally/march against the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Proposition 8. Using just the word-of-mouth power behind blog entries, Facebook links and Twitter tweets, a group reportedly sized around 200 assembled to express their frustration.
I say frustration, because from my perspective (and with some help from a knowledgable California lawyer) I can't argue very strenuously with the bare mechanics of the Court's decision. Quite obviously the impact of the ruling is a big negative and highly unfortunate, but my understanding is that the arguments chosen by plaintiffs--and in fact the longer term strategy for securing same sex marriage rights in California--were badly botched. So if the ire of the protestors was directed at the CSC, maybe the No on 8 proponents deserved a few rankled shouts as well.
That detail aside, it's fascinating to see how quickly a spur, location and time were proposed and settled upon, and then transmitted around the Internets in order to gin up participants. Surely Basic Rights Oregon and other local advocacy groups were behind or at least visibly supportive of the idea, given BRO exec Jeana Frazzini's appearance and speech at the rally. But it was not "organized" per se by anyone, really--the interest and details appear to have developed organically, immediately after the announcement.
I call it a PseudoFlashMob for a couple of reasons, not least of which is the Double-Reverse-Switcharoo Alliteration Feint that uses the letter P like most of the other words in the headline, but uses it in a way that is NOT alliterative! (Unless you pronounce it "puh-soodo," I guess.) The decentralized "pass-it-on" flavor of the event is the most obvious, but also key is the lack of a specific agenda or action plan moving forward.
There are pros and cons to that style of advocacy, of course--will anyone who attended be inspired to work actively for repeal of Measure 36, or in service of other gay rights causes, without a call to action? And with a full weekend to plan--albeit saddled with the Memorial Day holiday--was an almost entirely impromptu gathering all that could be managed, as opposed to something with a couple of days of planning to flesh out speakers and activities? A flash mob's main appeal is spontaneity; the reality is that the decision time had been known since Friday.
Finally, from the comments at Just Out, a little YouTube love from the event:
I have to say I'm of several mixed feelings regarding Barack Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his Inaugural. The side of me that's horrified by the pasasge of Prop 8 and revulsed by people who support it, is highly disappointed and disgusted that Obama seems not to have noticed--or cared--how offended many GLBT and allied members of the community would feel.
At the same time, this has nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with Obama's persistent hope and vision that the Inaugural can be a catalyst event for bringing the country together despite policy differences that can be quite deep in places. Warren has some nasty, bigoted and frankly homophobic views, but he is also a strong advocate against poverty and some of the "old school" concerns of the Christian church. Further, the benediction, in contrast, will be given by a very progressive cleric, one who is a strong supporter of GLBT rights. Isn't there something more important to our lives beyond January 20, that we could be focusing on?
So I've kind of vacillated back and forth whether I should be upset about Obama's choice or not. One person who's made up his mind is Portland's Rev. Chuck Currie, who is the Pastor over at Parkrose UCC, and also maintains an active progressive blog that I linked to his name, just above.>
I am deeply troubled that President-elect Obama has invited Rick Warren to offer the invocation at the inauguration. Warren stands opposed to the progressive agenda and to many of the core values that Barack Obama campaigned on. The symbolism of offering such as prodigious place in history to a figure such as Warren is upsetting.
Warren is a good spokesman for the Religious Right but does not represent mainstream Christianity.
"My blood pressure is really high right now," said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. "Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures... but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women's rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day."
Kudos to Chuck for getting his voice out there, and standing up as a progressive Christian definitely NOT fixated on gays and abortion. I think, given the fact that Obama and Warren are personal friends, that the chances the latter's appearance won't go off as planned are basically nil. But it's a good debate to have.
Groups gathering signatures to overturn two Oregon gay-rights laws say they are disconnected, frustrated and uncertain whether they can muster enough voter names to qualify for the statewide ballot.
They have less than seven weeks to collect the 55,179 valid signatures needed to refer each of two laws passed by the Legislature to the November 2008 ballot. Chief petitioner Janice Bentson estimates that only 5,000 to 10,000 signatures have arrived at her Salem home.
Good.
I'm gratified to see my fellow Oregonians spurn these people and their hate mongering.
(One eye on Bill Sizemore...one eye on our progressive values...
- promoted by carla)
As the summer forges on and anti-equality, anti-family advocates ramp up efforts to put two new Oregon laws onto the Nov. 2008 ballot, spotting petition fraud becomes more important than ever. With Oregon's new Domestic Partnership and statewide Anti-Discrimination laws threatened--vigilance is key.
As Oregonians, we've seen plenty of fraud in the past when it comes to signature gathering, and of course, this year will be no different.
Basic Rights Oregon recently put out a call to its supporters to call or email us with reports of possible fraud by our opposition who are attempting to put the heads of families on the chopping block. Already we've had over a dozen reports of shady signature gatherers.
Folks, you are the eyes and the ears across Oregon and we need your help in spotting petition fraud by our opposition...
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Welcome to the new place! We figured that Spanning the State was the most logical choice (being at the beginning of the week, and all) to kick off our new site. If you've got something(s) going on in your area that doesn't appear on the list, you can now create your own account here and post at LO in the form of a diary--and everybody can see it on the FRONT PAGE of the blog. Pretty damn cool, eh?
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And with that bit of housekeeping out of the way, let's Span the State!
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