Today Is The Day To Know You Acted For Equality!

All of us have had this experience, we give to a candidate or political campaign, and then we wonder what exactly our money was spent on? It is hard to know, especially when you give to a Senatorial or Presidential campaign, was my $250 dollars spent on talking to voters or was it spent on a Starbucks run for some mid-level staffers? Today you have a chance to not only know what you would get for your money in the general but in the very specific.  

Maine was the first State in the nation which brought full marriage equality to all it’s citizens by legislation. This is a huge deal as most State governments would rather chew off their collective left arms than bring up this issue, let alone do the right thing, the American thing, and stand up for full rights for all citizens. The downside of Maine doing this is their State allows what they call the Citizens Veto. Basically if any group gets enough signatures they can force an up or down vote on any piece of legislation. This is really not a bad idea from my point of view, but the same forces of intolerance which proposed and passed Proposition 8 in California (The Dog is looking at you Catholic Church, you too Latter Day Saints!) have pushed for a vote on marriage equality in Maine.

This is not an abstract thing, the voting starts in October in Main, and there are only a total of 56 days left to actual Election Day. If we are going to make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes of Prop 8 the time for your action is now. Hard words, but they are the blunt truth. Protect Maine Equality is has a great commercial up, you can see it below.

Sam’s story is the kind of thing the voters of Maine who don’t know (or don’t know they know) any GLTB citizens need to see. Sam is your every day kid, he just has two Mom’s. It is families like Sam’s the forces of intolerance are trying to deny marriage rights too. By showing this commercial, we can fight the stereotypes and defeat this Citizens Veto.

What is needed from you? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, money. It costs a mere $250 dollars to run this commercial one time, in prime time in Maine. If that is too steep, then for $100 you can be sure this ad runs on the local news. If that is still too steep, then $35 dollars runs it one time on cable. You can hardly go to the movies for less than $35 dollars these days, but that same amount of money would run this ad. If you are in a position where you can’t spear that much, well, I understand, times are hard. But send $10 bucks anyway. You will never miss it and you will be absolutely sure it will go to running this ad as much as possible.

There is some urgency here, as the forces of intolerance (The Dog looking at you Tony Perkins!) are planning a massive TV blitz and a huge rally to argue for the fine people of Maine to vote to prevent their fellow citizens from being able to express their love and commitment by entering into a legal and binding relationship. If we wait until this happens to act, we will lose the initiative and likely loose this fight.

Regardless of what the forces of intolerance say, this is not about protecting marriage or the family or anything like this. It is bigotry, first, last and middle. It is all about legislating morality over equality and they do it by spreading lies and fear. It is time we on the Left in this nation made it clear we believe in the premise of equality for all citizens, made it clear intolerance has had it’s day and that day is over! You can help, you can be sure you money goes directly to where it is needed, just follow this link and give what you can. Do it for Sam’s family, do it for social justice, do it for equality, do it so you can say you are keeping the Framers dream alive and expanding it in ways they never could, but most of all do it for yourself, for when we deny rights to any citizen, we endanger our own. You can donate by following this link. Don’t wait.

The floor is yours.