Tag: Equality Maryland

Gay Marriage In Maryland – Part One

This is going to be a two part post. Today, in Part One, a more positive post.  Tomorrow’s will deal with an editorial in the Washington Post by someone who made – in my opinion – some ridiculous arguments. But today will be non-confrontational.

Today there was a fund raiser for Equality Maryland – the lobbying group trying to get the referendum on the gay marriage bill to pass.  Originally it was supposed to be a screening of a movie with some comments by the State Attorney General, Doug Gansler.  Attorney General Gansler was one the first high profile elected official to support same sex marriage in Maryland. His office took the position that Maryland HAD to recognize same sex marriages from other states under the state constitution.  That position was recently upheld by the courts in Maryland. By the time we arrived, the Governor, the Lt. Governor and the Congressman from that district all agreed to speak.  The event raised a fair bit of money, though probably not enough given how much money is being spent by opponents. Continue reading Gay Marriage In Maryland – Part One

One Person Can Make A Difference For Gay Rights.

What prompted this post is a story about Chick-fil-A possibly ending it’s support of anti-gay marriage groups.  According to this story, Chick-fil-A has agreed to stop funding anti-gay—which means anti-gay marriage as well since those are mostly one and the same—at least that is what Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, who has been fighting the construction of a Chick-fil-A in Chicago, said today.

I hope he’s correct, the company didn’t formally agree with the Alderman’s announcement, but I’d say that after 10 months of fighting Chick-fil-A and all the success he’s had, he must feel pretty confident he won for him to now support the construction of the store.

Not that it matters, but I don’t think Alderman Moreno is gay. That he has taken this stand is all the more remarkable given he’s a newly elected official.  Stands like his, that welcome the adversity that come with them, deserve to be acknowledged.  For what little it’s worth – Thank you Joe Moreno!

In a similar story, what about Brendon Ayanbadejo?  He’s a straight pro-football player for the Baltimore Ravens who public spoke out in favor of gay marriage in Maryland. This article in the NY Times talks about where his life views came from.  For this man to do this to help people like my partner and I who don’t have the ‘bully pulpit’ that comes with celebrity status is astounding. If you read the articles you’ll see where he took a lot of crap, had people call him gay, ask him in the locker room when he’d be coming out as a gay, it would have been so easy for him to cave in and shut up, but he kept at it, even chiding President Obama for not supporting gay marriage.  Thank you Brendon Ayanbadejo!

One person can make a difference.