Yesterday Towleroad, The Advocate, The Bilerico Project, and Think Progress all erroneously reported that Basic Rights Oregon, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, would spend October collecting signatures to request a 2012 election ballot initiative to overturn the state’s same-sex marriage ban. They are all wrong.
We spoke with Basic Rights Oregon who explained that The Statesman Journal started the misinformation but Jeana Frazzini, Executive Director of Basic Rights Oregon explained:
“We are still engaged in an education campaign, and will make a decision in October as to whether to forward with signature gathering. We’ve been working to engage Oregonians in conversations about marriage for over a year – through TV ads, social media, field work and encouraging one-on-one conversations across the state. While support for marriage equality is increasing, we do not want to go to the ballot unless we are confident that we can win.”
So that is they might start collecting signatures if they think they can win. But they haven’t started and haven’t even decided yet.
Oregon courts have not ruled on the constitutionality of the state’s same-sex marriage ban and the state legislature cannot amend the constitution, so Oregon LGBTs can only way to win marriage through the ballot.
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Frazzini added, “Once we enter a heated political campaign, it will be impossible for our message of love, commitment and fairness to be heard over the din of the opposition’s negative advertising.”
Erik
“Once we enter a heated political campaign, it will be impossible for our message of love, commitment and fairness to be heard over the din of the opposition’s negative advertising.”
And why doesn’t our side ever engage in negative advertising? Portray our opponents as cruel thugs, whose rhetoric is responsible for the physical violence against our community and the suicides of gay teenagers.
It’s great to emphasis the positive, but we’re not telling the whole story.
Emma
@Erik:
You read my mind! Exactly! And it’s true after all unlike the negative falsehoods the anti-marriage equality bigots spout, it is actually true that because of them, indirectly, there is violence against LGBT people and gay kids commit suicide.
Someone needs to tell this to the people who lead the LGBT rights groups trying to get marriage equality in each state.
Erik
@Emma: Maybe it has to be me.
I know I have a gift with words. However, the only time I’ve spoken in public is to give eulogies for family members. Though I excelled in those instances, and view them as my finest moments, a funeral is a welcoming environment. Telling this story, and doing so publicly, would be a lot more difficult.
Saying this is sort of like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean. I’m not sure who i’m writing to…
But I’ve promised myself, if the fight over gay marriage comes to my home state of Maryland, if we have a ballot initiative next year in response to the passage of marriage equality legislation, I will start speaking.
I will tell our story.