My heart sunk when I woke up this morning and read that the "NO on 1" campaign in Maine had lost their bid a moving their state forward for gay and lesbian couples.
But there is some good news to go along with this very sad outcome:
The anti-discrimination ballot proposal in Kalamazoo, Michigan PASSED!
Kalamazoo city voters decisively adopted an ordinance Tuesday that extends anti-discrimination protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals.
The ordinance passed 7,671 to 4,731, making Kalamazoo the 16th city in Michigan to adopt such a gay-rights ordinance that grants the protections in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations.
The ordinance was approved in all but three of the city’s voting places. It also passed among heavy absentee ballot voting.
"There’s a lot of people who will wake up and breathe easier tomorrow knowing they won’t be fired or kicked out of their homes for being gay, lesbian or transgender," said Jon Hoadley, campaign manager One Kalamazoo, the pro-ordinance campaign committee. "It was astounding the overwhelming support that we had. Kalamazoo said this is what it wants."
This is huge. Kalamazoo can be an iffy area in terms of its support of progressive issues and candidates. But this victory is resounding.
Meanwhile, it also looks like a same-sex marriage 'Everything but marriage' initiative in the state of Washington may pass as well, though it's too close to call this morning.
The trends looked positive for the measure, which would expand the state's domestic-partnership law.
It was winning by nearly 3-to-1 in King County, where about 30 percent of the state's voters reside, and also doing well in other Puget Sound-area counties. It was being soundly rejected across Eastern Washington and in many other counties.
So, while I am sad for my friends in Maine, there are at least some bright spots and, you know what? We're not going to quit trying to change these laws until every goddam state in the country gets in line.
See you on the campaign trail.
I'm just sayin'...
UPDATE: As pointed out in the Comments by a variety of folks, St. Petersburg, Florida has now elected its first openly-gay City Council member Steve Kornell, Chapel Hill, North Carolina elected its first openly-gay mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, one of the two people that will go into a run-off election in five weeks for mayor of Houston is Annise Parker, a lesbian, who was the leading vote-getter and, in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Pugh was elected as the city's first openly-gay Council member (despite having the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News both retract their endorsements of him in the past several weeks.)