Friday Gay Blogging

Light blogging today. All the news is about Prop 8 and marriage, and you know what I think about that.

I'm fairly confident in the defeat of Prop 8. The climate is changing, and faster than anyone realizes, I think. I've noted a couple of times Illinois' favorite laughing-stock Peter LaBarbera's faillure to get a referendum on the ballot against same-sex marriage -- twice in a row. This year, he didn't even submit his petitions because he had so few signatures. Now, from Massachusetts, we see that MassResistance (certified as a "hate group" by the SPLC) has really come a cropper:

The effort by the anti-gay group MassResistance to reinstate the 1913 law has failed. The group had spent the past two months collecting signatures to place a referendum on the 2010 ballot to reinstate the law, which the legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick repealed in July, but by the Oct. 29 deadline for gathering signatures MassResistance had only managed to collect one-third of the total needed. The 1913 law, which banned marriages between couples from out of state whose marriages would be void in their home state, had been used by former Gov. Mitt Romney to block most out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. . . .

Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Secretary of State William Galvin, said MassResistance turned in roughly 10,500 signatures, far below the 33,297 needed to place it on the ballot.

That's slightly less than a third. That's what happened with LaBarbera: the first set of petitions had so many signatures disqualified that the Secretary of State couldn't accept them. The second never even made the count.

(Via Good As You.)

And for those in California, Box Turtle Bulletin has published a list of newspapers supporting and opposing Prop 8. (Don't skim the head of the list -- those are the two that support it.)

I had worked up a major post for "Write for Marriage" Day, but it was all over the place. Most of it was a rehash of what I've said before, so just do a search on "marriage" here if you really want to know.

And for dessert, something sweet from Made in Brazil: