Thursday, April 05, 2012

Ohio Marriage Equality Back On Track

It's been a struggle in Ohio, which banned marriage equality back in 2004. See, Freedom To Marry has been working on a proposed constitutional amendment to undo Ohio’s 2004 same-sex marriage ban [see post HERE]. So, they gathered signatures, more than enough signatures in fact, to submit their proposed amendment, but Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the, um, wording wasn't correct on their petition, so they failed.

Until now.

The petition was rewritten, and the appropriate signatures gathered, and now marriage equality advocates are one step closer to overturning that discriminatory, though constitutional, ban on same-sex marriage. DeWine has approved the petition's new language for the amendment that would call marriage the "union of two consenting adults, regardless of gender."

Now it's up to Freedom to Marry Coalition to gather some  385,253 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters in order to put the marriage equality amendment on the Ohio ballot. Ian James, Freedom To Marry co-founder, believes this can be accomplished by November 2013. So, it's not a done deal yet, in fact, it's probably more than a year away.

Ian James
And it faces an uphill challenge. Back in 2004, by a margin of 62% to 38%, Ohio voters supported an amendment to not only ban same-sex marriage, but also ban health benefits for public employees in domestic partnerships. But Ian James thinks that maybe the tide has shifted, and cites a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll which shows approval for marriage equality at 49%--though I think it's higher--up from 40% when Obama took office in 2009.

And Freedom To Marry will follow the example set by New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, when he worked to pass marriage equality in his state, by including an explicit exemption for religious institutions in the amendment language. Meaning no church or religious group should be forced to perform, witness, support, condone, enjoy, partake, in a same -sex marriage if they choose not to do so.

And that's fine.

Many gay people just want to get married. If our churches don't wish to perform the ceremony, well, maybe we'll look for more friendly churches, because the tide is changing people.


via Cubby via email via HuffPo

5 comments:

  1. Getting the signatures on the petition won't be an issue. The real issue is getting this through the elections commission - the body that will decide if the issue goes on the ballot as ONE issue, or its carved up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey into multiple issues.

    And of course Phil Burress (Citizens for Community Values) is still vowing to destroy any Republican who even shows any sign of support for this.

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  2. It takes a lot of battles to win the war and right now we have quite a few battles raging! Luckily the #'s are leaning in our favor on several! Keep up the good fight!!

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  3. Still seems odd, a majority voting on rights of a minority. That said WA has two about to set up this fall to overturn the legislature so off we go to the races.

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