Opponents of domestic partnerships want Oregon voters to repeal a 2007 law establishing legal rights for gay and lesbian couples.
State Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, state Senator Gary George, R-McMinnville, and former Sen. Marilyn Shannon of Brooks filed Initiative Petition 146 Monday with the Oregon Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury. It seeks to repeal House Bill 2007, the Family Fairness Act, which became law Jan. 1.
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State senator Gary George’s advice to the gay community? “Shut up!”
In his first media interview since coming forward as co-sponsor of the initiative to repeal the recently enacted Oregon Equality Act – an anti-discrimination law for sexual minorities – George railed against gay activists and affirmative action, and warned that if gays continued to be “oppressive toward straights,” they were in danger of “violent backlash.”
Some of his answers:
I’ve had people approach me for special rights for homosexuals and I don’t believe anyone should have special rights.
As an employer, I don’t wanna hear about it. This workplace is for work purposes. My advice to the gay community is SHUT UP, just don’t talk about it. If you walk around talking about what you do in the bedroom, you should be on the pervert channel.
If you do feel like you’ve been discriminated against as a gay, you have hard feelings. I remember when I was heavy and wore glasses as a child and I was picked on. We all know the gay person that nobody notices – I think that is where we need to head.
I have dear dear friends in the legislature who are black but sometimes I really get tired of hearing about their color.
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As we remember back in August "Oregon conservatives" were gathering signatures to force a vote on Oregon civil unions. They didn't have enough signatures.
Then an out of state "conservative group" contacted a federal judge, who, in turn, placed the civil unions on hold.
Now that judge suddenly lifts the hold!
A federal judge this afternoon threw out a lawsuit against Oregon's domestic partnership law, allowing the legislation to go into effect about 4:20 p.m.
The verdict was greeted with honking horns and shouts of joy outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland.
Grinning amid a scrum of reporters, Jeana Frazzini, executive director of Basic Right Oregon, a gay rights group, called the decision "thrilling."
"Not only did we win on the merits of the case, we really won new rights," she told a gaggle of reporters outside the federal courthouse in Portland.
Friday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman came a little more than a month after he had blocked Oregon's domestic partnership law for gays and lesbians from taking effect, as scheduled, in early January.
Mosman set a Feb. 1 hearing to hear a lawsuit by gay-rights opponents challenging the state's methods for verifying voter signatures.
The judge ruled that ultimately there was no constitutional right when you sign a petition to have the signature counted.
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Many couples were anxiously waiting for the clock's first tick of 2008. They were waiting to publicly express their love for each other in a long awaited civil union.
Recent news puts it all on hold:
Opponents to marriage equality saw to it that the Oregon state constitution was amended to exclude gay and lesbian families in 2004. Now, with a law to permit civil unions poised to come into effect on January 1, 2008, anti-gay activists are targeting the state with a federal lawsuit, alleging that signatures were illegally declared invalid on a petition to require that the civil unions law be subject to a vote during next year’s election, rather than passed by state legislators and signed into law by the governor.
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KnowThyNeighbor.Org announced that they will publish the name and address of every Oregonian who signs referendum petitions to overturn two gay-rights bills passed by the Oregon Legislature. According to the Secretary of State's office, this is legal because petitions are public information.
KnowThyNeighbor.org (KTNO), want to help stop petition fraud, so if a person “finds their name on this list erroneously they should immediately contact both the Secretary of State and KnowThyNeighborOregon.com and we will provide that information once names and addresses have been posted to our database.”
www.knowthyneighbororegon.com/
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