Sunday, July 29, 2012

Marriage Equality Cannot go Backwards Now

Out this week are the names and address of those who signed the “Anti-Gay Marriage Petition”. Before I saw these numbers I felt like we had a better chance than ever to be the first state to reject the opposition’s attempt to keep us suppressed as a community. WAKE UP NOW. We can still win this, but we only have 100 days left until voting day. This election will have a massive impact on all of our lives. If they opposition wins this vote it will take years to get back to the place we are right now. Think seriously about that. Each and every one of us, whether we are busy or not, needs to do something every single day to get our neighbors, family members and friends to vote with us. Find a group that is working to save the Civil Marriage Protection Act and get involved. This is no time to be nervous over never having done this kind of work before. Many groups such as PFLAG, Equality Maryland and Marylander’s for Marriage Equality (MFME) will train you and nurture you. If you do not want to interact with people face to face volunteer as support staff. MFME needs office help to do data entry. They will need many hours of this work every single day from now until November 6th. If you are good at personal interaction please consider applying those skills to phone banking or door knocking. I know from personal experience that some of you just do not like talking on the phone, but we need your help and we need it in large numbers. Remember this is a short term commitment and it will affect the lives of our entire community for a very long time, possibly for the rest of our lives. How can I motivate you to action? Some of you are in college and some of you have careers. You are busy, I know. Achieving and holding onto Marriage Equality is very major step in the work that LGBT rights activists have been working on since Dwight Eisenhower prohibited lesbians and gays from working in the federal government. It has taken since 1953 to get to this point. We can not go backwards now! What are you going to do about it? https://secure.mdfme.org/page/signup/volunteer http://www.equalitymaryland.org/volunteer/