Photos I took while volunteering for the Maine No on 1 campaign from Oct 1 – Nov 3, 2009. Until those last horrible few hours on Election Day when a majority of voting Mainers (53%) voted away the hard won marriage equality of lgbt folk, the mood was optimistic, hopeful and building toward a celebration. Nothing I had imagined was able to prepare me for the shock and dejection that came after the last of these photos was taken; my camera had quit working an hour or so before I became aware of the polls turning in favor of Yes on 1.
When the full weight of what had happened pushed against me, I scrambled to get out of the Holiday Inn, where a celebration had been expected. But I couldn’t find my ride. As I searched through the confused crowds I noticed a young lady beginning to sob and being comforted by a friend or a might-have-been wife. My phone was dying and all my calls went to voice mail. Finally I borrowed a friend’s phone, found my ride and left the funereal disaster scene for the car where I sat alone listening to quiet music.
After so much effort – years of effort for some – had come abruptly to a dead end, my only thought was, “Now what?”
12
Nov 09
Religious Authority vs. LGBT People
The movement to throw off ancient barbaric views about LGBT people and to include LGBT people at society’s table is a change the conservative priests and religious fundamentalist preachers and institutions have decided to oppose at all costs.
Washington D.C. Catholic Diocese Threatens to Stop All Social Services if Marriage Equality Passes – washingtonpost.com
Why? They believe, and rightly so, that this LGBT Civil Rights Movement is a direct threat to their unquestioned authority and traditional power. How, they ask, can they admit their vilification and dehumanization of lgbt people has been in error all of these .. centuries? Yet that’s what more and more straight lay folk are coming to understand about anti-LGBT religious teachings as LGBT friends and family bear witness to prejudice and injustice. More and more straight lay folk are seeing the anti-gay teaching of their conservative fundamentalist church, priest or preacher as nothing more than ugly supremacist bigotry, fear and ignorance being passed down from generation to generation.