Florida’s Amendment 2 passes
Nadine Smith – director of Equality Florida – has sent a message to supporters of marriage equality concerning last night’s passage of Amendment 2.
In an email Nadine writes:
While 62.2% of Floridians voted to add this language to the constitution, there is a silver lining to this fight.
There has never been stronger support for Domestic Partnership and Civil Unions than today in Florida. Every single poll has shown a broad and growing majority of Floridians believe in providing vital protections to unmarried couples.
We have built a strong coalition like never before. Our allies not only said NO to Amendment 2, they rallied and canvassed and phone banked and stood shoulder to shoulder in the field with us.
Thank you for your incredible commitment to the Fairness For All Families’ Vote No On 2 Campaign. We may have lost this battle, but our state is moving toward fairness.
The extremists behind amendment 2 insisted over-and-over that it would have no effect on protections for unmarried couples. We’ll hold them to their word and fight tooth-and-nail to ensure not one single person loses their health care or other vital protections because of this discriminatory amendment.
Over the past three years, the Fairness for All Families / Vote No On 2 Campaign has forged a powerful coalition of over 260 organizations representing millions of Floridians. And the most important part of our coalition is you. Especially now, we’re going to need your continued participation in the struggle for justice and equality in Florida.
We are deeply disappointed tonight, but we will never give up. We’ll keep fighting until every family in our state has the same benefits and protections. Thank you for standing with us.
Nadine Smith
Executive Director, Equality Florida
Co-Chair, Fairness for All Families’ Vote No On 2 Campaign
Are you all saying that marriage should be redefined?
Redefined to mean what?
It pains me deeply that there are still so many people who think it’s okay to grant rights for some, but not all. Sad to see Hate is still alive and well in Florida.
It’s because of your hard work and perseverance that I am able to hope for a better, more socially conscientious future for my daughter. I have been married before and now am in the best relationship of my life but do not wish to remarry. This battle is NOT about homosexuality, it is not about religious beliefs, it IS about FAMILY. That definition must be expanded upon;the 1950’s paradigm is outdated and no longer applicable. Thank you for your work on the behalf of all our families, same sex or not. Together we will continue to keep educating for equality.
Do _not_ put a happy face on this. We were stabbed in the back. Part of it is our fault in that we obviously did not make it clear that we expected the Democratic Party to work as hard for us as we did for the Democratic candidates. The new President and many elected Democrats won their contests in Florida by less than the estimated gay vote. We can wield power. We can stay home next time. In general our best interests are served by the Democratic Party, but we aren’t effective nor do we benefit from being taken for granted.
Fix it by 2012 or we stay home.
In as much as this country finally got based it’s racial bigotry in electing Barack Obama, this issues serves as a wake up call regarding how far we still have to go.
The sad part is this was a very slanted and biased ad campaign. All anyone focused on was gay marriages. News flash to all: All the heterosexual couples out there that have been together, but not married (for example, the elderly because they may lose their SSA benefits), this just hit you in the mouth also.
Nobody has the right to decide who anyone is with unless it DIRECTLY affects you. Oh, and you have to love the ” if raised by gay parents, children will be gay”..NEWSFLASH: our parents were heterosexual.
This is just flat sad..
I completely agree with you. I volunteered and donated generously, walked the streets delivering literature and spoke to thousands people in regards to the deceptive language that was used to word this ammendement. This ammendment does not prevent gay marriage, which is already illegal, but it invalidates any domestic partnerships that affect anyone whether straight or gay, of having ANY type of committed relationship and have benefits or even the right to visit our loved ones in the hospital. So if we are not married, as the hypocritical “christians” interpret a committed union, we have no rights and we are second class citizens. We pay taxes like everybody else and now if a gay black man decides to live with someone else, he will not have made any progress as far as equal rights are concerned. We need to fight this and appeal to President elect Obama to overturn this denial of equal rights for people in our situation, otherwise I agree, as a gay man I will campaign for gay people to sit the next election out. We had high hopes when President Clinton was elected and all he could come up with was “don’t ask, don’t tell”. That was 1992 it is now 2008. We will not put up with this any longer. WE DEMAND
OUR EQUAL RIGHTS!!!
who are you to judge how a homosexuals family consists of? that is the problem right there.. get out of the hate shell and accept that there are gay people in the world and arent going anywhere. the fight will overturn and you bigots will go down!