Thursday, December 22, 2005

Anti-Gay Marriage Proponents Use Fraud to Advance Amendment In Massachusetts

The Christian right in Massachusetts is apparently willing to do anything to win in its effort to ban gay marriage in the only state in the country where it is currently legal, including committing fraud.

According to a Boston Globe report, petition circulators pulled a bait-and-switch to deceive people into signing petitions calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. The signature collectors would ask a person to support an effort to legalize the sale of beer and wine in grocery stores, and then hand the person the ant-gay marriage amendment petition to sign.

As a result of the deception, proponents of the gay marriage ban were able to obtain enough signatures to get it certified for submission to the state legislature. If at least 25% of a constitutional convention approve of the amendment in two successive legislative sessions, the proposal goes to the voters for approval, which would not occur until 2008 at the earliest.

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