Monday, January 14, 2008

Florida Anti-Gay Amendment In Trouble

I truly hope that this hate motivated amendment proposal does not make it onto the Florida ballot. First because it is wrong to encode discrimination into a state's constitution and secondly, I have had enough of the GOP's gay bashing ploys to bring out the most bigoted and un-Christian voters, particularly with a goal of affecting a presidential election. Here are some highlights form 365gay.com (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/01/011408florida.htm):
(Miami, Florida) Backers of a proposed amendment to bar same-sex marriage in Florida are scrambling to find 20,000 signatures to get the measure on November's ballot after the Secretary of State announced Monday that a counting mistake put them well short of the required 611,000 signatures needed. Last month the Secretary of State's office said that Florida4Marriage collected 612,192 names, a thousand more than was required.
Monday Browning announced there had been a massive error in Dade County. Browning, said the new count showed that election officials in Miami-Dade had ''double-counted'' some 27,000 paper petitions. With two weeks until the deadline for submitting signatures it is unclear if Florida4Marriage will be able to make up the 20,000 name shortfall.
The amendment says, "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." An investigation by the St. Petersburg Times into funding for the Florida4Marriage has found that of the $193,000 that had been raised by the group $150,000 came from a single donor - the Florida Republican Party. Opponents of the amendment say it could be used to cancel domestic partner benefits throughout the state, for both gay and straight couples.

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