Maddow: Group Who Worked To Pass Prop 8 Using Same Campaign To Repeal Gay Marriage In Maine (VIDEO)

An initiative to repeal existing gay marriage rights in Maine, called Question 1, is headed for a vote soon, and Rachel Maddow takes a look at how tactics employed successfully by gay marriage opponents in California during the Prop 8 battle are being imported wholesale into Maine.

The same people who were hired to help pass Prop 8, Schubert Flint Public Affairs, are now running the anti-gay marriage campaign in Maine, and they are running basically identical commercials.

Maddow interviews Jesse Connolly, campaign manager for "No on 1 Protect Marriage Equality", about the fight to preserve marriage equality in Maine.

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Comments

[KIVPossum]

I'm all for this.

Marriage should be a sacred union of close relatives, consumated in pajamas and total darkness, only for the sake of procreation.

[hippie4ever]

I assume the Catholic and Mormon Churches are also funding this effort. Hiding behind their nonprofit tax status, intruding upon secular life, spreading a gospel of hatred and bigotry. Tax the churches that engage in political lobbying.

[bluechevy]

The Mormon Church never did "fund" the campaign. Persons belonging to that faith certainly did. Even still, do people of faith not have the right to object to something they disagree with? You certainly have the right to support or oppose something, why shouldn't they?

[Mindbullet]

Okay let me spell it out for you: Your faith = d/ck to me. I'm an atheist. In no way should elements of your faith work themselves into a system of governance that is bound by it's founding documents to protect me from your cult. Your religion may seek to press it's value system into government policy, but this is not a theocracy. You put your own religious freedom in jeopardy when you seek to press your beliefs onto the rest of us. And btw, the people are the church, so don't try to act like it wasn't the Mormon church championing oppression of gays.

[Feenicks007]

As a Mainer nothing annoys me more than when out of state groups treat us like we're stupid. I've actually had people ask me if we had running water, electricity, or the internet. We're not a 3rd world country, we're a state in the union for crying out loud. We saw the ads that were used in California and it's a huge insult to try and use the exact same ones a year later. The state attorney general researched it and has come forward to say that the bill in no way advocates or demands that SSM will be taught in Maine schools. She went on to highlight how we can approach the school system to make sure our children aren't taught about gay marriage if we don't want them to be taught. Instead of focusing on the issue (should people be allowed to marry the one they love, regardless of gender) the anti gay marriage advocates are trying to muddle the issue, by throwing kids into the mix. It's a separate issue. I don't think it should be taught to kids, if their parents don't want them to learn about it.
If a family decides it would rather teach hatred and intolerance, they should have that choice.

[johnnynyc]

Wow, tactics that worked once before are being tried again!!!!

I'm glad she's got a doctorate in poly-sci.

Uneducated people like us couldn't possibly have predicted this!!

[RonGallion]

Isn't President Obama against gay marriage? Mmm I guess we are both bigots.

[TheBaffler]

Yes, you are.

[RonGallion]

Is President Obama a bigot?

[jmpurser]

That's how I see it. A black American who's for separate but equal and Justice delayed is a particular disgrace.

[radiodog]

There will be a time when the descendants of those who work so feverishly to deny equality to gay people will shamefully whisper their names in the same manner one would do today upon finding out that a grandparent was a member of the Klan.

[jmpurser]

Exactly. It's already happening. In less than a generation these people will either deny they were on the side they're on or will be considered the family embarrassment. But rights shouldn't wait a generation.

[Mindbullet]

This is not something that should be brought before a popular vote. The very fact that it is being brought before a popular vote is an indirect jab at GLBT people everywhere in that it infers that their right to marry isn't really a civil right. If Maine votes to revoke the right for gay marriage I wouldn't blame folks for causing total chaos and rioting in the streets. The same people voting away rights would no doubt make a huge mess of the streets if they had their right to marry stripped away by a majority of gay people. It's a good thing I don't have super mutant powers b/c a lot of people would get the business end of my mutant boot if I did.

[Romulus]

Marrying someone of the same sex is not a civil right. See Baker v. Nelson (1972)

[radiodog]

Equality under of the law is, however, still part of our Constitution.

[Mindbullet]

Yes, a bunch of old white guys made a bigoted ruling. One day sooner than you think same sex marriage will be a civil right. You cannot stop this fight, so either help or get out of the way.

[Shwazy]

If marrying someone of the same sex is not a right, then neither is marrying someone of the opposite sex, according to the equal protection clause.

Ban marriage in general, imo. Let the cards fall where they may.

[KIVPossum]

Equality is a right.

As an aging committed heterosexual I do not undersand people's opposition to it.

To me, if two people want to make a committment to each other, that is their right as citizens of a supposedly free nation. If they want to mix colors - black and blue, yellow and green, black and purple, it is not a problem. If they want to mix sexes, or have one sex, it is not a problem.

I want loving people to be together.

I know many homosexual unions enjoy the same pleasures as my wife and I do. And it is wrong to deny them the joy of making a public profession of their committment to each other. It is as wrong as slavery, denying women the right to vote, and racially segreated water fountains.

[ohmetoo]

These people with the tight asqs who are so against gay and lesbians marrying, we should seriously ask them, "Do you want a gay guy to marry YOUR daughter? Do you want a lesbian woman marrying YOUR son? That might just wake them up, hopefully thinking. Love is love people, and everyone needs to step back and think about it.

[LMPE]

If Stephen King writes another novel, his scary element should be the people trying to ban gay marriage in Maine.

[James Caroline]

Maine will come through. They've Moose(s)... and if they don't- I say we vote on the tax exempt status for churches.

[ohmetoo]

I agree so much politicizing coming from the pulpit that they need to step up and pay their fair share of taxes.

[RTIII]

I disagree; we don't vote on their losing tax exempt status, we merely ensure that the laws preventing tax exempt churches from political advocacy are enforced to the maximum extent of the law. That SHOULD result in their loss of tax exempt status, and if it doesn't, then we march in the streets until it does. There's ALREADY laws against it - we need enforcement!
.

[TJCole]

Let's just outlaw all marriage....that's one solution, think of all the pain and wasted legal fees we'd save as a country...!

Marriage is an unsustainable inequitable out dated concept...

Also it's only fair, if gays can't ruin their lives I mean marry, then nobody can...

If you love each other, why ruin it by allowing our corrupt government into your relationship..?

[JSDKoeln]

If it were that simple. Too many laws and rights involved. But I do think that marriage should only be civil partnerships. If they want fairy dust spread over their license, then let them go to the M0ron Church.

[solarian]

they are not freedom loving american just narrow minded

[Amunaka]

The man Right wing Republicans Howard Ahmanson (who financed AIS) vote counting machines and anti gay heavily contributed to The Chalcedon Institute, an organization that mandates Christian "dominion" over the world Discovery. their manifesto

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies

THE WEDGE STRATEGY

CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE & CULTURE
INTRODUCTION

http://www.kcfs.org/Fliers_articles/Wedge.html

[Amunaka]

The Man Behind Proposition 8

Posted by Max Blumenthal,
The Daily Beast November 4, 2008.

The reclusive billionaire, the mother of Blackwater's Erik Prince, and the drive to fund this year's most controversial referendum.

Among the local ballot measures to be decided on Election Day, California’s Proposition 8 is perhaps the most fiercely contested. Backers of the proposition to ban same-sex marriage in the state cast their campaign in apocalyptic terms. “This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” born-again Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Chuck Colson told the New York Times. Tony Perkins, the president of the Christian right’s most powerful Beltway lobbying outfit, Family Research Council, echoed Colson’s language. “It’s more important than the presidential election,” Perkins said of Prop 8. “We will not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage.”

While the Church of Latter Day Saints’ public role in Prop 8 has engendered a growing backlash from its more liberal members, and Broekhuizen’s involvement attracted some media attention, the extreme politics of Prop 8’s third largest private donor, Howard F. Ahmanson, reclusive heir to a banking fortune, have passed almost completely below the media’s radar. Ahmanson has donated $900,000 to the passage of Prop 8 so far.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democracy/106102/the_man_behind_proposition_8/

[RTIII]

"...passing the collection plate for advertising..."

HEY, that's ILLEGAL! THIS time, lets get some action on revocation of the non-profit status of any and all churches who collect funds for political causes. It IS the law! There MUST be serious revocation or else the idea that churches cannot be directly involved in politics (as a part of an agreement for their non-profit status) is lost.
.