There was plenty of rage last week when House Speaker Gordon Fox, himself a homo, conceded that they couldn’t deliver the votes for marriage in 2011. BOOOOOOO! Hiss. It’s super-disappointing news, given that polls showed that voters supported marriage. It means that legislators are lagging behind their own constituents.
So now we’ve jumped over to Plan B, which is to push ahead with civil unions for now. But there’s also an aspect of revenge to many activists’ plans: they plan to vote out as many anti-equality legislators as possible in 2012. Rhode Island equality organizations are pinning their hopes on a “vote out the bums” effort, effective immediately.
But that’s easier said than done, because without a vote on the marriage bill, we don’t know exactly which ones would have opposed it. But we have a few likely suspects, starting with Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed. She opposed the marriage legislation, proving that you can’t always assume that one party or another will always have the same approach to protecting LGBTs. She’s up for re-election in 2012, so hopefully she’ll be a footnote soon enough.
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That having been said, some folks may be going a bit too far with their outrage. “It’s time to disband the House and Senate,” one protestor told the Associated Press. “It’s time to get rid of all of them.” Er well yes we are all very bummed that the bill didn’t pass, but maybe let’s hold off on destroying the foundations of representative democracy for just a little while longer.
Jay T
Vote the bums out!!!
AL
Alright, let’s show some compassion for this woman by chipping in to buy her a set of braces!
meego
Those teeth are SCARY!
John K.
I’m glad this evil woman is getting some attention. I’ve been sending her pictures of the dead gay kids whose ranks her actions may very well increase, and I plan on continuing to do that indefinitely until marriage equality is the law of Rhode Island or until she no longer has an office for me to send them to.
I’ve also bought stainonhistory.com (not yet launched) where I plan to make sure that these people are not just footnotes, but remain known for their bigotry and depraved indifference to the suffering of others for the sake of their own political careers. We tell them that history will not look kindly on them, so I’m going to make sure that is the case, especially for these otherwise unknown state officials who maybe think we will forget about them after these laws pass down the road. We will not forget how you’ve hurt us.
Bill
As a Rhode Islander I know firsthand that our legislature is a complete disaster. The state is pretty much a one-party system as Republicans only have a handful of seats in the legislature (10/75 in the House and 8/38 in the Senate — and was a dramatic rise in the 2010 election!). And for whatever reason, incumbents rarely lose their primaries even though they’re a corrupt, inept bunch.
We need a real second party in Rhode Island. If the Greens were smart, they’d pour all their effort into this tiny state whose media market is easily and cheaply saturated.
blatherer
That picture would definitely scare somebody gay.
Bill
This lady (Paiva-Weed) always comes across as really weird and creepy whenever you see her on the local news.
Fitz
RI has a lot of heart??!! No.. you aren’t from there. I am. It’s an AWFUL little picturesq hellhole. Except for the food, which was good, there wasn’t much niceness there at all. If we really want to help RI GLBT people, we will stop focusing on marriage and start focusing on emergency-relocation funding. Yuck, ick, phhht.. now I have spent 45 seconds thinking about the place. Going to go take a walk in my lovely Californian town with my friendly neighbors, and safe street.
Tony Pelliccio
I don’t know. I think part of what tanked marriage equality in RI was a confluence of two things.
The first was the splitting of the supportive groups into little factions.
The second – I think and firmly stand by this. MERI had become a political threat. Which is how I think they got former Rep. Ray Sullivan – he got in there to torch the operation and so far it appears he and his cronies have done a good job of setting us back.