Violence broke out at a same-sex marriage rally this weekend in Brisbane, Australia, as a Christian group preached near the march.
... The Christian organization ... explained that the pro-gay marriage supporters then began ripping up the group’s placards. “Quite a number of the members of the gay rights rally then all started attacking me, assaulting me and strangling me…All of this was filmed on our video cameras….On my neck I had very clear signs of injury where I had been punched and strangled.”
The statement concluded: “The gay rights rally was supposedly about achieving equal love, but it was clear that the people part of the rally did not show any sort of love to those who had a difference in opinion on gay marriage. A difference in opinion can be and should be discussed, but at no point is violence acceptable.”
LOSER - The Truce: Daniels got himself crosswise with a not-insignificant element of the Republican base when he called for a “truce” on social issues in order to focus full attention on the debt and spending issues the country faces. Daniels had made clear he would double-down on that approach had he run for president. But with him out of the race, you won’t hear any top-tier candidate talk about the truce — except in pejorative terms — any time soon.
Gay marriage advocates hope to regain their momentum in Albany this week after a series of hard knocks, but some of their allies have begun to wonder whether the string of bad news was more than just coincidence.
They are looking for signs of a coordinated effort behind their recent setbacks, which have seemingly trimmed the chances that any Republican senators might break ranks and join with Democrats to pass a same-sex marriage bill before the session ends June 20.
Mark Grisanti and Andrew Lanza — Republican senators considered potential swing votes — said last week they remain opposed. Brooklyn GOP Senator Marty Golden introduced an anti-gay-marriage bill just two days after his ally, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, trekked to Albany to lobby for Republican support for marriage. And Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long said opposing gay marriage will be a litmus test for the party’s endorsement in 2012. . .
Still, some allies see little prospect that any mayor, movie star or athlete will be enough to counter the effect the Conservative Party line has on Republicans in swing districts.
“There doesn’t need to be a whole coordinated effort when the numbers just aren’t there,” said one. “If Mike Bloomberg can guarantee 9,000 extra votes on the Republican line to make up for the 9,000 votes on the Conservative line, well, okay, then.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels surprised the political world with a weekend announcement that he will not run for the Republican nomination for president after approximately a year of speculation he would run.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, is laudably seeking to uphold marriage as key to a stable society in a speech today.
Meanwhile his Energy Secretary Chris Huhne "is engaged in a bitter divorce from his estranged wife Vicky Pryce, who has five children including three with Mr Huhne, after he left her for his bisexual lover."
Now there's a complex new family form.
update -- from a reader: Wikipedia confirms the less wacky reading of the sentence. i.e., that Ms. Pryce (nee Courmouzis) had two children during her marriage to her first husband, and then three more following her divorce from Mr. Pryce and subsequent marriage to Mr. Huhne.
Frank Deford is a novelist, screenwriter, Emmy and Peabody-award winner, a member of the Hall of Fame of American sportwriters, and was elected six times by his peers as America's greatest sportswriter.
In this moving column on NPR, which invites gay sports stars to "come out", he also calls on the U.S. Olympic Committee to intervene so that the great Olympic athlete Peter Vidmar can, in peace, serve his country and his fellow athletes, instead of facing exclusion for having donated to Prop 8:
"In the meantime, vis-a-vis tolerance, let us encourage the U.S. Olympic Committee to plead with Vidmar to rejoin the American team –– an honorable gentleman, whom we can all respect, whether or not we agree with one opinion of his."
A divisive debate that would have condemned [Prime Minister] Julia Gillard's stance on gay marriage was yesterday derailed at Labor's state conference due to a low turnout.
Only hours earlier the Prime Minister had urged the party faithful to unite and show courage in the fight for a carbon price.
In the first Victorian ALP conference since the federal and state elections, progressive forces within the party put up an urgency motion calling on same-sex marriage to be a part of federal Labor's national platform.
The latest out of Maryland, where SSM failed earlier this year:
"...rumors that HRC has offered to make a significant cash contribution to the financially troubled Equality Maryland in exchange for the group allowing HRC to select its next executive director were heightened this week when HRC’s regional field director, Sultan Shakir, began working at Equality Maryland’s headquarters office in Baltimore on Monday." -- Washington Blade
Katherine Kersten's op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Now that the Legislature has endeavored to let the people vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage, I suggest a few ground rules to ensure a fair and open exchange of views.
First, we must reject the name-calling that has marred the debate to this point. Same-sex-marriage supporters' constant mantra has been that Minnesotans who support one man-one woman marriage are motivated by bigotry. Gay-marriage proponents make this claim even about people who merely support letting Minnesotans vote on the issue.
The Star Tribune's recent editorial on the marriage amendment was typical. "Don't put bigotry on the ballot," its headline ran.But people who support one man-one woman marriage are not bigots. They argue, very reasonably, that marriage is rooted in nature -- in male/female sexual complementarity -- and that children need both a mother and a father. They say that's why it has been the bedrock institution of procreation and social order in virtually all times and places.
Same-sex-marriage supporters' attempt to tar this view as "bigotry" seems designed to shield them from tough questions as they campaign to redefine the world's fundamental social institution. Labeling your opponent a "bigot" is the ultimate rhetorical mudball--a classic slur intended to silence and intimidate rather than to facilitate an exchange of ideas.
Tonight the Minnesota House, by a margin of 70-62, voted in favor of a bill passed last week by the state senate allowing the people of Minnesota to vote on marriage in 2012.
Update: Voting yes were 68 Republicans and 2 Democrats. Voting no were 4 Republicans and 58 Democrats.
Congratulations to everyone, especially those on the ground, who worked to pass this amendment!
The Associated Press, reporting out of Albany, NY:
Just a couple of weeks ago, the momentum to legalize gay marriage in New York appeared to be an irresistible force, teed up to reinvigorate the flagging national effort.
... Since then, the conservative and religious opposition has struck back in a big, unexpected way.
Now the opposition has a $1.5 million fund of its own from a national group [i.e. NOM]. There was even some shakiness in the ranks of gay marriage advocates, while Republican senators on the other side, rather than wilting, appear emboldened. A new "defense of marriage" bill has been introduced that wouldn't recognize gay marriages sealed in other states.
Opponents of gay marriage are also bolstered by defeats of similar bills this year in Maryland and Rhode Island. Same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C., a list unchanged since New York's Senate rejected the measure in 2009 in a surprising blow to the national movement.
The suggestion of violence (if this account is true) is abhorrent, especially from a man of the cloth. But should the people of Minnesota be deprived of the right to vote because somebody in the state legislature did not vet a so-called pastor?
City Hall picks "Winners and Losers" every week. The losers this week, it says, include:
New Yorkers United for Marriage — The coalition working so hard to pass a gay marriage bill has spent major money trying to flip Republican Senate votes. But with weeks left to go in the session, all their celebrity endorsements will pale against the reality that Republicans will vote how Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long want, money and lobbying be damned. Long threatened this week to withhold the Conservative line from Republicans who vote yes, which could be the kiss of death for some who got their margin of victory on Row C. Marriage activists still have time, but the coalition once considered unstoppable may end up stopped after all.
Gay marriage-advocate Mayor Bloomberg suffered a setback in Albany yesterday after his closest state Senate ally introduced legislation to roll back existing same-sex marriage rights.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) voids recognition of gay marriages performed in other states, and comes just two days after the mayor traveled to Albany to press Senate Republicans to legalize same-sex nuptials.
... Golden's effort ... gives conservative senators a rallying point in the fight against gay marriage.
