Triumphs in Massachusetts, Connecticut

[Ian David]

Press Release

Nov 5, 2008
Triumphs in Massachusetts, Connecticut
Marc Solomon, MassEquality Executive Director
http://www.massequality.org/news/


Yesterday was another historic day for marriage equality in New England. In Massachusetts, we rebuffed our opponents' efforts to take out pro-equality legislators once again, and built an even stronger cushion of pro-equality votes in the State House.

Our opponents vowed to change the composition of the legislature in order to advance another anti-gay initiative petition. In this endeavor they failed. Instead, we increased our pro-equality votes in the State House from 151 out of 200 (in June 2007) to 158. We are just short of having 80 percent of the legislature stand with us for marriage equality.

Opponents also promised to "punish" those 10 courageous legislators who switched their vote. They ran anti-equality challengers and dropped tens of thousands of pieces of nasty, negative mail attacking our incumbents for their pro-equality votes. But again they failed -- every single legislator who switched their vote last June and ran for re-election won last night.

In Connecticut, marriage equality is now safe, and we played a key role. We partnered with our friends at Love Makes a Family in Connecticut to defeat a ballot question that would have called for a Constitutional Convention. Opponents of equality in Connecticut billed this as their only opportunity to repeal the court's decision. And in that effort, they lost by a vote of 40 percent to 60 percent. Our field director, Amy Mello, has led the field program of Love Makes a Family for the past 10 months, and under her leadership, they assembled a powerful effort to protect marriage equality and defeat the Constitutional Convention question.

In addition, in partnership with Love Makes a Family, we were able to help Rep. Jason Bartlett, the first openly-gay African-American state representative, win re-election in the first race after he came out. This was a race that Connecticut Democrats viewed as extremely challenging, and we prevailed.

This news from Massachusetts and Connecticut is tremendous, and we are poised to build on this momentum and make gains on marriage equality in the coming months throughout the northeast, in New York, New Jersey and Vermont. We are also prepared to move ahead full-steam on a transgender non-discrimination and hate crimes bill in Massachusetts.

I myself am writing this email from San Francisco, where I have spent the last two weeks assisting the No on 8 Campaign to protect marriage equality in California. I was responsible for leading the Get-Out-The-Vote efforts for Northern California, from the Bay Area to the Oregon Coast. Our side raised $35 million, and won the endorsements of nearly every major newspaper and key leader in the state. But nevertheless, it appears as though we came up just slightly short.

I cannot pretend that this loss does not sting. It does, terribly. But as dejected as I am today, I am equally sure this is a temporary setback. As Martin Luther King said so eloquently, "The arch of of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Sometimes it just doesn't happen as quickly as we would like.

I am so proud of MassEquality volunteers and former staff who joined me in California to help, of MassEquality donors who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars, and especially of the many phonebanks we conducted from our Boston offices from 9 PM until 11:30 PM to speak to undecided California voters.

And of course, we are so buoyed at the win of Barack Obama, the first presidential candidate MassEquality has endorsed. We will now have a strong pro-equality voice in White House, and long-stifled legislation supporting LGBT equality will finally be signed into law.

Thanks, as always, goes to you, our members, who make all this possible. In the past few months, you've made thousands of phone calls for Obama, for equality in California, and for legislators here in Massachusetts. You volunteered on Election Day on campaigns across the state. You gave directly to pro-equality candidates. And as the result of your financial generosity to MassEquality and our PAC, we were able to send hundreds of thousands of mail pieces in key districts and lend support to help our candidates build strong campaigns. You are what makes MassEquality strong, and I am so grateful to you for it.

Onward!
Marc Solomon
Executive Director

http://www.massequality.org/news/

[Rockholm]

1. If only the CA people were as organized as MassEquality.