2 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

September 11, 2009

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www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Mary Cheney gave $1,000 to anti-gay Ohio candidate

by Eric Resnick

Great Falls, Virginia-The lesbian daughter of a former vice president has given $1,000 to an anti-gay Ohio U.S. Senate candidate.

Republican candidate Rob Portman, who seeks the seat being vacated by the retiring George Voinovich next year, received the contribution from Mary Cheney of Great Falls, Virginia.

Cheney and her 17-year partner Heather Poe came to national prominence when her father Richard was vice president.

Mary Cheney campaigned for her father and George W. Bush although both held anti-gay positions. The campaigns were

connected to marriage ban amendment efforts intended to get conservative voters to the polls, including a 2004 one in Ohio.

During the 2000 campaign, the future vice president and his wife Lynne tried to deny that Mary is lesbian, though it was well known at the time. Mary served as the gay outreach director of the Coors Brewing Company, where her job was to end a boycott of the beer begun by San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and improve the company's image in the LGBT community.

Cheney and Poe have a two-year-old son. This gave her the opportunity to speak out against religious conservatives and Republican officials pushing policies to harm LGBT families.

One of those Republicans is Portman, making her contribution ironic.

Portman represented the Cincinnati area in the House from 1993 to 2005 when he was tapped to become the Bush administration's trade representative. He holds the record as Congress' largest-ever recipient of donations from the insurance industry.

Portman has a zero on every Human Rights Campaign scorecard except the 2002 one, where he got a 17 for having a nondiscrimination policy in his office.

In 1999, Portman voted to ban adoptions by LGBT people in the District of Columbia. In 2004 he voted for a federal constitutional marriage ban amendment.

In June, Portman's campaign manager Robert Paduchik told the Columbus Dispatch that Portman still opposes marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Portman will face either Democrat Jennifer Brunner, the current secretary of state, or Lee Fisher, the current lieutenant governor, in 2010.

Brunner unconditionally supports marraige equality, a position she has held publicly since 1989. Fisher's position is more nuanced, though he seems to be moving toward supporting marriage equality as well.

Both Brunner and Fisher have long records of advocating for LGBT equality.

Maine and Washington anti-gay issues head to ballot

by Anthony Glassman

WITH WIRE REPORTS

Olympia, Wash.-While laws granting couples' rights in two states are facing likely battles at the ballot boxes in November, pro-equality forces are fighting back through elections offices and the courts.

In Washington, a domestic partner law expansion that grants all of the state rights of marriage, without the name, to samesex couples is being challenged by a referendum.

A judge on September 8 dismissed a suit by Washington Families Standing Together, the pro-domestic partnership organization. The group said that Secretary of State Sam Reed's office accepted thousands of signatures that were on petition forms improperly signed by signature gatherers, or that signers were not registered to vote at the time they signed because many filled out registration cards at the same time.

It was not clear at press time if Washington

Families would appeal. The deadline was September 10, when voter guides had to be printed and ballot information sent to county election boards.

Thurston County Judge Thomas McPhee ruled September 8 that there is no law requiring the secretary of state to reject signatures on petitions not signed by the gatherer. McPhee also ruled that there is no requirement that someone be registered to vote before they sign.

He said they simply had to be on voter roll's by the time the signatures were checked.

Another issue is whether to allow marriage foes to keep the names on the petitions hidden, which goes against state disclosure laws.

Backers of Referendum 71, which puts the domestic partner expansion to voters, got a temporary injunction keeping the petitions from being made public, saying that signers would face harassment and threats, a violation of their First Amendment rights.

A pro-gay group has pledged to put all

the names on a web site as soon as they become public.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle issued a restraining order against releasing the names while he mulls the situation, and he was also expected to decide by September 10.

'Money laundering' in Maine

While those battles were raging in the Northwest, supporters of Maine's law providing full marriage for same-sex couples charge that opponents are laundering money through conservative organizations to bypass state disclosure laws.

Californians Against Hate filed a complaint against Stand for Marriage Maine, which showed all but $400 coming from the National Organization for Marriage, the Portland Catholic diocese and the Knights of Columbus. That means that around $343,000 was donated by the organizations, and the origin of that money has not been revealed to elections officials.

Fred Karger, the head of Californians

Against Hate, referred to it as "money laundering" and the executive director of the Maine Commission of Governmental Ethics and Election Practices sent a 65-page letter to the heads of the National Organization for Marriage and Stand for Marriage Maine, asking for background on whether his office should launch an investigation on the groups.

"It is illegal for a [political action committee] to knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another," he wrote.

The ethics commission will hold a hearing on October 1 to decide whether it will pursue an investigation.

The Catholic diocese, however, is making it relatively clear that they are collecting money from parishioners directly for the campaign.

The bishop asked churches in his diocese to take up a second collection to support Stand for Marriage Maine next week. The group is holding a rally on September 13, and tickets are only available through area churches.

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