Human Rights Campaign Jams MN Senate Computers with 100,000 Marriage Equality Emails
source: http://nomexposed.org/2011/05/23/hrc-jams-mn-senate-computers-with-100000-marriage-equality-...
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hrc-jams-mn-senate-computers-with-100000-marriage-equality-emails
By Kevin Nix
May 23rd, 2011 at 5:40 pm
From star reporter Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent.
Sen. Scott Dibble told Minnesota Public Radio that 100,000 emails sent to legislators by gay marriage supporters were clogging the servers and that the Senate IT department was set to delete them Monday morning. The emails, sent through the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT rights group, chided Republicans and a handful of DFLers who voted Saturday night to put a constitutional ban on gay marriage on the ballot in 2012. Secretary of the Senate Cal Ludeman said the emails were being help in a spam filter and that his office was workign to get them back into the system.
“Hundreds of thousands of emails have come in the aftermath, so many so that the Republican caucus is deleting them before their members even get to see them,” Dibble told MPR.
Sen. Warren Limmer, the chief author of the anti-gay marriage amendment, said, “Not true. Not true. We aren’t wiping off comments of our constituents. That’s just simply not true.”
Sen. Dibble answered back, “That absolutely is true, and that’s exactly what the secretary of the Senate has told us.”
Secretary of the Senate Cal Ludeman tells the Minnesota Independent that the sheer volume of email coming into the system had caused it to crash on Sunday. By early Monday morning 230,000 emails had flooded in, he said, adding that he ordered the IT department to send a large number to a spam filter.
He said that those emails coming in would not be deleted and that they were working to “filter them back in.”
He wasn’t aware which emails were coming in or which ones needed to be sent to a spam filter.
“We are managing the traffic and they’ll be flowed back into the system,” he said.
Already the flood of emails has rankled some legislators. Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, responded to the emails over the weekend in a manner some thought rude.
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About NOM
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a highly secretive organization believed to be largely funded by the Mormon and Catholic churches. During the country’s greatest economic decline in decades, NOM has amassed huge resources to stop marriage equality, whether at the ballot box or in court. NOM publicly projects rationality and tolerance, yet keeps company with zealots and long-time LGBT antagonists.
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http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/05/23/Minnesota_Marriage_Battle_Beg...
Posted on Advocate.com May 23, 2011 10:35:00 AM ET
Minnesota Marriage Battle Begins
By Andrew Harmon
Photo: MINNESOTA FLAG X390 (THINKSTOCK) | ADVOCATE.COMAn antigay marriage ballot measure approved over the weekend by Minnesota state lawmakers is already setting the stage for a deeply divisive campaign of national importance.
On Saturday, the Minnesota house voted 70 to 62 in favor of the bill, which allows voters in 2012 to decide whether to adopt a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality. The vote came after hours of debate and days of impassioned Capitol rallies on both sides of the debate.
Gov. Mark Dayton does not have the authority to veto the bill but has said he will lobby to defeat the amendment.
National LGBT groups were quick to condemn the house vote, with Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese calling it an "appalling" blow to the state's gay families. “We are confident, however, that when November 2012 arrives, Minnesotans will reject these divisive tactics,” Solmonese said in a statement.
Anti-marriage equality forces cheered the vote as a key victory. Minnesota Family Council president Tom Prichard, who has lobbied against gay marriage and in the past has denounced anti-bullying school policies as "just a pretext for reeducating students about beliefs on homosexuality," attempted to strike an air of civility when discussing his group's upcoming antigay campaign. "[O]ur goal is to not make it personal," Prichard told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "I think we can have a respectful discussion and conversation on the importance of marriage in our state, where there's widespread support that the best environment to raise children is with a loving mother and father."
Though extensive polling does not yet exist, a May 13 survey by the Star Tribune did not find "widespread support" for a constitutional amendment: 55% of respondents opposed the antigay initiative and 39% approved. But it's unclear how a likely multimillion-dollar campaign waged by both sides of the debate will ultimately sway voters.
Whether such an amendment could survive a court challenge if it were passed is also unknown. Though a federal district judge struck down California's Proposition 8 amendment last year, there are key differences between the two states. For one, California had already allowed gay couples to marry prior to Prop. 8's passage: approximately 18,000 same-sex couples remain married in the state, creating what some marriage equality supporters have dubbed a "crazy quilt" of those who can and cannot get legally married.
Minnesota, which has a statute prohibiting gay marriage, has never allowed gay couples to marry. In 1972, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in the case Baker v. Nelson that state law prohibits same-sex marriage (the U.S. Supreme Court later dismissed an appeal in the case "for want of a substantial federal question").
Other states could follow suit in bringing anti-marriage equality amendments to the ballot in 2012. In North Carolina, about 3,500 protesters rallied in support last week for adding an amendment to the state's constitution. A proposed amendment would need to pass the state house and senate by a three-fifths majority in order to be placed on the ballot next year.
"We've been fighting for this for a long time," Rep. Mitch Gillespie, a Republican representing Burke and McDowell counties, told the Raleigh News & Observer last week. "I fully expect it to pass this year and I expect a large bipartisan vote on it."
During a press conference in Washington, D.C. with reporters last week, Chad Griffin, cofounder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which waged the Prop. 8 legal battle, said his organization would be ready and willing to fight another court battle against an antigay ballot measure.
In Minnesota, Donald McFarland of Minnesotans United for All Families, a new multi-group pro-marriage campaign that includes OutFront Minnesota and Project 515, said his organization is ready for the upcoming fight. “Our campaign is hitting the ground running and we plan on using every resource available to defeat this anti-family constitutional amendment,” McFarland told the Star Tribune.
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