Florida gay marriage ban makes ballot

[Mika]

http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/402907.html

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A citizen initiative to ban gay marriage will be on the November ballot, the only one of more than 50 active petition drives that qualified Friday at the deadline for signature verification.

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Sponsors of the single-gender marriage ban announced in December said they had obtained enough verified signatures. State officials then lowered the count by more than 20,000 signatures due to a glitch in the Division of Elections' electronic reporting system. Some signatures had been counted twice.

Florida4Marriage.org had to restart its all-volunteer petition campaign and collected 92,000 signatures in just 13 days, said the group's leader, Orlando lawyer John Stemberger.

"We contacted every national group that we knew about, we contacted every church leadership that we knew about," Stemberger said. "It was a blessing to the group because it better organized us. We're so very, very much ahead of where we would have been."

The proposal's backers are facing a well-organized opposition campaign called Florida Red and Blue. The group's chairman, Jon Kislak, said he expected the proposal to get on the ballot.

"We are already busy collecting the resources and building the campaign it will take to defeat this dangerous amendment," Kislak said. "We remain confident that voters will reject this amendment once they learn it can take away existing rights and benefits from millions of Floridians."

The opponents claim it would affect the rights of all unmarried couples regardless of gender.

Each proposed state constitutional amendment required 611,009 signatures. That's 8 percent of Florida voters who cast ballots in the last presidential election. The 8 percent criteria also had to be met in at least 13 of Florida's 25 congressional districts.

The same-sex marriage ban was certified with 649,346 signatures - 38,337 more than the minimum. Hometown Democracy, which was opposed by developers, businesses and many local officials, failed by 65,182 signatures.

Florida Red and Blue
http://www.floridaredandblue.com/

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[msongs]

1. proud christians will be out in force this year as no major candidate favors equality for glbt's

lip service yes, pandering, yes, full equality and marriage rights? no. the repubs probably will not even lip serve or pander, leaving those strategies to the donnie mcclurkin guy and hillary.

if the dem wins, the only audacity of hope is that after being elected, some executive orders will come down freeing glbts to say
"free at last, free at last, thank god almight we're free at last", something the original and best MLK said. Then maybe the MLK wannabe will step up to the same level as the original.

Msongs

[kdmorris]

2. I really hate my state, some days

I'm surprised they didn't get it on the ballot sooner, as Florida is still one of the states that bans gay adoption.