In Washington, Stickney Confirms the Obvious

According to  the National Organization for Marriage, gays should be perfectly content with the separate but equal  status afforded by civil unions. That theme was promoted in California's Proposition 8 contest and is now being asserted in Maine's Question One campaign. The cynical underlying motif is an attempt to convey the idea that opponents to marriage equality aren't hateful bigots and have nothing against gay people. They merely want to limit the "sacred" covenant of marriage to one man and one woman. It seems perfectly obvious that those who are now proponents of Question One — which would strip Maine's gay taxpayers of the right to marry — are not in favor of civil unions or anything, for that matter, that gives legal status to gays. The real agenda is to prevent anything that might officially affirm the acceptance of homosexuality.

Washington state's referendum 71 makes this all too clear. If approved by the voters, Referendum 71 would convey the right for gay couples to form civil unions that are equal to marriage in most respects. Essentially Referendum 71 takes God and religion out of the equation; substituting a contract for vows and lawyers for clergy. Opponents to Ref. 71 are the usual suspects — fundamentalist Christians. Opponents to marriage equality and, in this case,  civil unions, are unable to formulate a cogent argument that either has any negative effect on traditional marriage. In Washington, the anti-gay argument is simple; These civil unions are just like marriage and voters do not favor gay marriage. In other words, they are using a religious argument to oppose unions that have no religious connotations.

In today's OneNewsNow, the leader of the opposition to Ref. 71, Larry Stickney, head of the Christianist Washington Values Alliance says that Christian voters may be decisive factor.

"If people in the state of Washington understand that it is ultimately marriage, then we'll win this election," he predicts, "because the people in Washington do not want homosexual marriage."

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"Pray around the country, please, for us, and that people vote in droves," he urges. "If we can turn out the Christian vote, we'll win this thing easily."
 
But getting believers to the polls is not a given, he says. "That's always the challenge...to get our Christians and our church-goers out to vote," Stickney laments, "but here's an issue that they definitely need to and want to weigh in on."