Right now at Netroots Nation 2011: Free Speech TV is live streaming "The Plan to Advance Marriage Equality, Inside and Outside of the 112th Congress."
The discussion from 1:30-2:45PM CT features New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the sponsor of legislation to repeal DOMA; Courage Campaign founder Rick Jacobs;Pam's House Blend Editor Pam Spaulding; AMERICAblog Deputy Editor Joe Sudbay; and Lambda Legal Marriage Project Director Camilla Taylor.
California Republican gubernatorial nominee and billionaire former eBay CEO Meg Whitman was a major supporter of Proposition 8. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown have refused to defend the ballot initiative in court.
Whitman tells the The Sacramento Bee that if elected governor she would vigorously defend Prop 8.
Whitman said, "The issue right now is, as I understand is 'Will Proposition 8 have the appropriate support to actually make an appeal to the circuit court of appeals?'And I think the governor, the attorney general today has to defend the constitution and has to enable the judicial process to go along and has to enable an appeal to go through. So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court." Whitman's campaign later told The Bee that she would become a defendant in the appeal of Walker's ruling if needed.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who declared the initiative unconstitutional August 4 in a landmark ruling, has suggested that only the state has "standing" to defend the law. The appeal will be heard in San Francisco on December 6th.
Courage Campaign Director Rick Jacobs has challenged Whitman: "She wouldn't be governor yet. The appeals court will decide before there would be a change of governor and attorney general...You're going to see us making it clear that Meg Whitman is unqualified to be governor on any stand."
The National Organization for Marriage's summer hate tour continued to the Georgia State Capitol over the weekend. The sparsely-attend rally's featured speaker was Alveda King, niece of slain civil rights legend Dr. Martin Luther King and a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives. King is well known for her anti-choice and anti-gay views and once again raised the spectre of "genocide" when speaking against same-sex marriage. "It's been statistically proven that ... [marriage] guarantees the continuity of the generations. We don't want genocide, we don't want to destroy the sacred institution of marriage."
Arisha Hatch from the Courage Campaign's NOM Tour Tracker conducted an excellent follow-up interview with King, who expanded on her bizarre extinction theories: "The best guard against extinction is marriage between one man and one
woman raising those children. Statistics keep proving that when a male
father and a female mother come together and they make a baby and raise
the children, the children actually do better. They do better than
families that are divorced, and I know that first hand."
King also rejected MLK's widow's famous support for gay rights and marriage equality, saying that she "shared" Dr. King's "DNA" and Coretta Scott King was "only related ... through marriage." Alveda King also refused to answer what she thought "would happen if white people were allowed to vote" on civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
Alveda King—who has had two abortions and admits to being "the first in the King family to have a divorce"—has previously said "everybody uses Martin Luther King Jr.’s name for their own benefit.” Truer words were never spoken. Watch the speech and interview AFTER THE JUMP ...
Continue reading "WATCH: MLK's Niece Compares Marriage Equality to "Genocide"" »
