Stand For Marriage Maine

Three Degrees of Separation: LaBarbera, Gallagher, and Stand for Marriage Maine

Submitted by Kyle on October 29, 2009 - 8:47am

Yesterday, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, and Paul Madore from the Maine Grassroots Coalition hosted a press conference in Maine designed to "expose the hidden aspects of the radical homosexual agenda" at work in the state.

Since their message did not correspond with Stand for Marriage Maine's efforts to appear tolerant, the group quickly denounced the press conference and those involved:

Opponents of same-sex marriage on Wednesday warned that “radical homosexual” groups concealing their true agendas were behind efforts to keep Maine’s gay marriage law on the books.

Those charges were denounced as “hate-filled speech” by the campaign defending gay marriage in Maine, however. And leaders from Stand for Marriage Maine, the organization behind the Nov. 3 ballot initiative to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law, quickly distanced themselves from the event.

“We disavow anything said today as being in any way connected to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign,” said spokesman Scott Fish. “Whatever was said today was simply the words of the people speaking at the press conference.”

In a wide-ranging media event in the State House, three representatives from the Maine Grassroots Coalition, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality and Mass Resistance charged that “extreme groups” with agendas far outside the mainstream were supporting the No on 1 campaign. A small group of supporters also attended the event.

Speakers suggested that enactment of Maine’s gay marriage law will lead to “homosexual indoctrination” in schools as part of a bigger agenda that threatens families and society.

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, described the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — one of the nation’s most active gay rights groups — as having “one of the most radical sexual agendas ever conceived.” He also sought to link the group to efforts to legalize public sex and prostitution, claiming this is part of a larger agenda.

“Very clearly there is already a very aggressive agenda in the schools,” said LaBarbera when discussing a news report of a teacher answering a student’s question about her relationship with her partner. “Homosexual so-called marriage only fuels that agenda. It institutionalizes it so that there can be no difference in how this aber-rant form of ‘marriage’ is compared to the real thing.”

Interesting, because on Tuesday LaBarbera was on Janet Porter's radio program along with Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage.

NOM is Stand for Marriage Maine's largest donor and has "bankrolled more than 60 percent of the campaign to ban same-sex marriages in Maine," so why is Stand for Marriage Maine so eager to distance itself from LaBarbera and his associates even though Gallagher is appearing with him on right-wing radio programs?

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RWWIF: Religious Right Targets Maine & Marriage Equality

Submitted by Kyle on September 17, 2009 - 2:16pm

Our latest Right Wing Watch In Focus has been posted, entitled "Religious Right Targets Maine & Marriage Equality with Money, Anti-Gay Swat Teams and Reprise of Prop-8’s False Fearmongering Strategies":

National Religious Right organizations that bankrolled the effort to put Proposition 1 on the ballot in Maine descended on the state this past weekend with a SWAT team of anti-gay leaders and veterans of last year’s Prop 8 battle in California . The Religious Right’s collective targeting of Maine ’s new marriage equality law demonstrates the huge importance right-wing leaders have placed on reversing gains by marriage equality advocates in the northeast. Religious Right activists must not be allowed to set back this achievement with another massively funded campaign of deception. People For the American Way urges its members and activists to lend support to the excellent Mainer-led campaign No on 1/Protect Maine Equality.

...

Earlier this year, after hard work by local organizers, Maine legislators passed, and the governor signed, marriage equality legislation. Religious Right leaders responded by pouring money into the state to help gather signatures for a veto initiative, and they have imported the strategist and strategies that fueled the dishonorable Prop 8 campaign in California . It’s urgently important to prevent the Religious Right from turning the milestone in Maine into yet another victory in a nationwide war against equality. Equality in Maine must stand. Non-Maine residents can support the No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign with donations, participation in phone banking, or even by spending a week in October volunteering for the campaign.

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Is This What The Right Is Buying With All Its Maine Money?

Submitted by Kyle on September 15, 2009 - 8:14am

Outside right-wing interest groups have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Stand for Marriage Maine's campaign which have accounted for more than 99% of all its donations.

So what is Stand for Marrige Maine doing with all that money? I have no idea, but they certainly don't appear to be spending it on ads, judging by this truly awful frist attempt:

Good As You has more on the "substance" of the ad's claims.

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How Much Are Mainers Willing To Spend to "Stand for Marriage"?

Submitted by Kyle on July 16, 2009 - 12:47pm

Yesterday, Joe Sudbay took a look at the first campaign finance report in the Maine marriage campaign that was released yesterday and found out that national Religious Right groups were dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the fight.

Today, the Lewiston Sun Journal took a look as well and concluded that "the group hoping to overturn Maine's same-sex marriage law has out-raised the measure's proponents by more than two to one":

Stand for Maine Marriage, the group leading the effort for repeal, raised a total of about $343,000 from nine donors as of July 5, the end of the reporting period.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland contributed $100,000, the Knights of Columbus of Washington, D.C., chipped in $50,000 and Focus on the Family, a Christian group based in Colorado Springs, Colo., donated $31,000 to the political action committee seeking to repeal the gay marriage law.

Nearly half of the group's fundraising, $160,000, came from the National Organization for Marriage, a New Jersey-based group established in 2007 "in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures," according to its Web site.

While Stand for Marriage raised more than $340,000, Maine Freedom to Marry raised about $138,000 - but the amazing thing is that of the donations brought in by Freedom to Marry, $80,000 came from residents of Maine.

Guess how much of the money raised by Stand for Marriage came from Maine residents?

The campaign finance report also shows four Maine citizens contributed a total of $400 to the cause.

$400? That means that, out of the total amount raised, the amount donated by actual residents of Maine to the effort constituted a whopping .1%, whereas the amount donated by Religious Right groups like NOM and FOF made up the other 99.9%.

I can't wait to see how this right-wing effort manages to spin this and produce ad claiming to speak on behalf of Mainers who want to protect "traditional marriage" considering that actual residents of the state don't seem to support the effort at all.