This isn’t good…

Group Claims Near Required Signatures To Put Gay Marriage Ban On Calif. Ballot

The organization collecting signatures for a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in California says it is close to meeting the requirement.

Protect Marriage says it has collected 881,000 of the 1.1 million signatures needed. The deadline for turning in the petitions to county registrars is April 21.

Registrars are then required to take a random sample of signatures to verify.  If that sampling shows at least 10 percent more valid signatures than required the petitions will be certified and the measure will be placed on the November ballot.

"The numbers are good, solid," Ron Prentice, a spokesperson for Protect Marriage told The Christian Examiner, a conservative Christian publication.

"We are well toward our goal. There are thousands more yet to be counted with a steady stream still coming in."

Among the major donors to Protect Marriage are a group of San Diego County businessmen. Developer Doug Manchester alone has contributed $125,000 prompting gays to urge a boycott of his properties.  Manchester owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.

Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500, Carlsbad car dealer Robert Hoehn gave $25,000, and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, according to state records.

It would just break my heart if the land of my birth did that to me.  I’ve noted before that the only reason I can travel freely around the United States is that I’m single.  If I had a spouse, there are many states in this so-called union that we simply could not set foot in because if one of us had a sudden health problem, or there was an accident, it would become a nightmare for both of us.  Even with a so-called durable power of attorney, we could be denied the right to simply be with each other in a hospital…even with a medical directives document…we could be denied the power to make medical decisions for each other should one of us become suddenly incapacitated.  Some state constitutional amendments, like Virginia’s are so stringently and thoroughly crafted to ostracize same sex couples from the protections of the law, that they can even be read to deny same sex couples the right to hold a joint checking account.

There are simply not that many people in this country who hate us enough to want to do that to us.  The problem, like it was for another hated minority group over in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s, is that the rest of the nation doesn’t care enough to tell them to stop it.  So when these amendments are put up to a vote, they stay home and allow hate to have its way.  These are the people who say later, "We heard the rumors, but we didn’t believe them…"

Once upon a time I planned to move back to California after mom passed away.  Then I got the job I do now, and my little Baltimore rowhouse, and I stayed in Maryland.  But even now I think sometimes that when my time to retire comes, if it ever does, I’d like to spend the last years of my life back there where I was born.  It’s a lovely state.  It would break my heart if the day ever came that I couldn’t even visit California again.