51% of Likely California Voters would Reject California Initiative Against Gay Marriage

An proposal on the California ballot this fall that would codify into the state constitution that marriage should be between a man and a woman would be defeated if the vote were held at this time.  Forty-two percent of likely voters would vote to approve the measure according to a report at the LA Times "Slim majority of California voters would uphold gay marriage, poll finds".

In 2000 61% of voters passed a law that would prevent same sex marriage.   It was that law and other discriminatory ones that were found to be illegal earlier this year the article adds.

And as you may know that led to the availability of same sex marriage in the state. 

Advertising hasn't started on the proposal, yet and it's attracting money from across the nation.  Each side has raised million of dollars.

The article links to a map showing larger Californian cities and their donation profiles.  It also shows the amount of money reported to have been collected from within and outside the state .  A greater percentage of the money to pass the ban on same sex marriage has been collected from other states, but the opposition to the measure has raised more money overall.   Los Angeles and San Francisco counties lead the way in opposing the ban.  Orange and San Diego counties are leading in supporting it.  Anyone in the state could have guessed this though.

The New York Times today reports that Massachusetts has voted to end their ban on marrying out of state same sex partners (unless their home state approved the union).  The governor says he will sign the measure the paper reports in "Same-Sex Marriage Barrier Nears End in Massachusetts ". 

Why let California get all that wedding money? ( Still, most of the weddings I heard about were low key affairs between people who were just happy to be able to declare their union).

An earlier report in the Times reports on a group, 'Californians Against Hate' organizing boycotts of large donors supporting the California proposition through their Facebook page.  Though political conservatives maintain that donating large amounts of money is "freedom of speech" according to what we have heard from them before, now they claim that choosing whether or not to spend money with a business because of such large donations is not freedom of speech, but bullying tactics, and have used one such boycott in fund raising appeals that sound eerily like typical televangelist tactics.

Where have we heard stuff like that before?  Oh yeah, when Japan declared that calling a boycott on pro whaling nations (many of whom had their dues and travel expenses to the IWC paid by the nations doing actual whaling) would be "Economic Terrorism",  and, indeed, not one of the intrepid news sources that we were able to find listing or indicating some of the pro-whaling countries dared name the entire list of countries who supported ending the ban on whaling even without advocating a boycott.  We were able to discern all but two of the nations though reading a few dozen articles, but sadly to say our boycott wasn't complete because the press failed to do their job.  Never heard from Japan either.

Read NYT article "Donation to Same-Sex Marriage Foes Brings Boycott Calls ".

 Apparently, since I left the fundamentalist church and joined a Presbyterian one a new sin has been codified with the fundies.  I had heard indications of it some of their speech, but searching I can also find specific mention.

 The new sin is tolerance of those you think are sinning.

And indeed the Bible in a letter does warn about tolerating sin.  The catch is that it is talking about tolerating sin that insults many within the the local church group itself, not outside in the world.  

The church is free to be intolerant within it's own group, but no real mention of forcing one's beliefs on nonbelievers (or members of the local believing community) is part of the New Testament strictures.  I know at this point though, suddenly fundamentalists go to Old Testament words to show that they can force their culture on others.  Yet should you start comparing the violent Old Testament to the violent features of the Quran (which many Christian neocons maintain shows that Muslims are inherently evil) our friendly fundamentalists would claim that we are creatures of the New Testament now (well, that remains to be seen since fundies are some of the main supporters of the war on Iraq).

And, indeed the New Testament does supercede the old, unless everyone wants to go back to avoiding pork and a lot of other stuff we partake of.  Therefore, tolerance had better be seen in the New Testament light.

We've already had a guy in Tennessee who felt he had the right to kill Unitarians because of their 'tolerance'.  And the US is becoming a laughing stock in the world for tolerating intolerance as a nation changing creed. 

BTW, if anyone thinks that boycotting people from opposing sides is just a liberal thing they are free to check out Boycott Liberalism .  I went to check and see if there were a way to apply for getting on his list.  It might be good for increasing readership.

All I could find there was a list of movies to boycott.  The reasons for boycotting the movies were not given as actions, words, etc in the movies and one TV show  (way to go Bill Maher.  I'm betting Jon Stewart is green with envy) but  because of people who acted in them. 

Therefore, it's obvious that the boycott is about people and their political beliefs. 

A type of boycott was held by Free Republic a hard core right wing forum that the Bush administration has used to covertly disperse and acquire information when it published a list of supposedly 'terrorist connected businesses'.  The list contained the name of Nick Berg's father's company because the father had ties to peace activism and may have been the reason that the younger Mr. Berg, who was representing his father's company looking for rebuilding opportunities in Iraq was detained by the FBI for 10 days in 2004 preventing him from safely leaving the country.  You may remember that Nick Berg was the subject of the decapitation video widely viewed on the web.

tags: same sex marriage  same sex marriage ban  massachusetts  california  disiminate  aquire  

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