News from Wisconsin
Friends,
The news is not so good from Wisconsin. We tried hard, too, to turn back the marriage amendment, but it passed. We had support from the mainline Protestants (Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans) but the large Roman Catholic vote and the smaller evangelical vote was being steered by their leadership strongly against LGBT persons.
On the other hand, Democrats took control of our State Legislature, and our Democratic incumbent Govenor kept his seat. You may say there is no difference in the parties, but the fact is that the anti-gay amendment in this state was all about the Republican party's desire to extend their control of State government, and they failed. In fact, there strategy may have backfired. The Republicans may have failed because the Amendment brought out progressive voters in large numbers.
I can tell you, with Democrats in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, there won't be any anti-gay Amendments coming out of that house for two years. As long as we can prevent the U.S. Constitution from changing on the "marriage issue," there is hope that some day state level discrimination will be struck down--maybe not soon, but eventually people will regret the Constitutional Amendments that they passed last night.
Steven Webster
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