I write letters (you should too!)

In Maryland, we have one state Senator who has announced both that she plans to "pray" on how to vote on the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Act, (yes, that makes my head spin, too!) and that she won't vote for a bill that looks like it will fail. (Because being on the winning side is always better than being on the right side, I guess.) I think she needs to hear from us.

Dear Sen. Conway,

I write to ask you to vote for the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Act. As a religious person myself, I know that you mean well when you state that you will pray for guidance on how to vote on this issue. However, I also know that some people use interpretations from the Bible as an excuse to discriminate against gays, despite the fact that other faiths interpret those same passages quite differently. I feel compelled to remind you that we do have a First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state, and while I respect your right to hold your own personal religious views, you were elected to represent ALL your constituents. There are faith traditions that currently perform same sex marriage ceremonies, and they want those marriages to have the same legal recognition as marriages performed for heterosexual couples.

Marriage equality is a church-state separation issue and we must not allow our laws to be based on one belief. I would respectfully ask that you put aside your own personal religious positions and vote for this Act. I would be happy to speak with you in person about this very important matter. There are thousands of lesbians and gays who reside in Maryland, and we deserve full and equal representation by our elected officials.

Written with some previous text I got from my friends at the wonderful Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Chipping away at your Constitutional rights -- all in the name of fighting "terrorism"

I'm starting to think "the terrorists" have won. Terror: intense, sharp, overmastering fear. And Terrorism: the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.

Fear and submission? Point in case, from the Baltimore Sun:

Spying uncovered
Documents show state police monitored peace, anti-death penalty groups

Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show.

The files, made public Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, depict a pattern of infiltration of the activists' organizations in 2005 and 2006. The activists contend that the authorities were trying to determine whether they posed a security threat to the United States. But none of the 43 pages of summaries and computer logs - some with agents' names and whole paragraphs blacked out - mention criminal or even potentially criminal acts, the legal standard for initiating such surveillance.

In other words, the State has become so afraid of "terrorism" that it has violated the law to spy on Americans who speak out against State sanctioned executions. Unless I missed something, we're still allowed to dissent? Remember, freedom of speech and all that? First Amendment?

The ACLU says it best:

"Everything noted in these logs is a lawful, First Amendment activity .... For undercover police officers to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful political protest activities into a criminal database is an unconscionable waste of taxpayer dollars and does nothing to make us safer from actual terrorists or drug dealers."

Because this is what the undercover agents found:

The only potentially unlawful activity mentioned anywhere in the documents, she said, were two instances of nonviolent civil disobedience. In one, activists refused to leave a guard station during a protest at the National Security Agency after bringing cookies and drinks for the guards, and in the other, they hatched a plan to place photographs of soldiers who died in Iraq on the fence surrounding the White House.

Do you still wonder why I'm so upset about Barack Obama's vote on FISA? These rights are worth protecting. If we don't speak up now, will we be be able to later?

UPDATE: From RawStory:

Kucinich to investigate police surveillance of protest groups

"[M]ost people would be upset to know that police were spying on lawful citizens and infiltrating peaceful organizations, rather than chasing down real criminals," said Kucinich in a press release delivered to RAW STORY. "At a minimum, such police spying is clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars and a diversion from the mission of protecting and serving the people.

"I want the subcommittee to determine how widespread these activities are and who ordered them," the Ohio Democrat and former presidential candidate said.

Things that frustrate me to no end: The short guy with big ears from Ohio loses out big time to the charming smooth-talker from Chicago. But who's got your back, folks?

Maryland resident? Get busy!

From Equality Maryland:

Last week, the Healthcare Facility Visitation and Medical Decisions bill (SB 566) passed the Maryland Senate Finance Committee with a 9-2 vote. The full Senate will vote on this important bill this week and they need to hear from you. Our opponents have been sending them messages with absurd hypothetical scenarios designed to scare them into voting against the bill. Now it's your turn to be a voice of reason.

This measure would extend 11 protections to unmarried partners in times of sickness, aging and death. They include the right to visit one another in the hospital, the right to make medical and funeral decisions in the absence of an advance directive for one another, and the right to share a room in a nursing home. A similar bill was passed in 2005 but was vetoed by former Gov. Ehrlich.

Send a letter to your state senators and make sure this bill reaches Governor O'Malley's desk!

Maryland Attorney General Voices Opposition to State Marriage Ban

What do you know? Some indication of sanity from our elected officials. From today's Baltimore Sun:

Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has become the most prominent official in Maryland to endorse gay marriage, telling state legislators yesterday that he believes the current ban on same-sex unions amounts to discrimination.

"It would be hard for me to have this job knowing there is something so wrong in our society," Gansler told the Senate panel considering a bill to legalize gay marriage. "I just think it's wrong to discriminate against any people because they think differently or because of their sexual orientation."

Anyone who wonders why we need elected officials to take the lead on subjects like this need simply read the words of a stay-at-home mom who testified for keeping the ban in place:

the "homosexual lifestyle" is "devastating. Redefining marriage is an activity undertaken to the peril of our civilized society."

That would be the same civilized society that sentenced the Lovings of Virginia to a year in prison in 1959 for marrying inter-racially. They had violated something called "The Racial Integrity Act." According to the judge in that case:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

So, yeah. That civilized society.

Civil Marriage in Maryland: Why it's an uphill battle, and how you can help

Great post over at Pam's House Blend about the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act (Senate Bill 290 /House Bill 351). I do love many things about my adopted home state of Maryland, but it does have some odd politics.

For non-Marylanders, Maryland is a strange blue state but not an evenly blue one. All states have geographical diversity, even tiny Rhode Island, but Maryland's geography and history lead Marylanders to identify much more strongly with their locality, their county or region, than with the state. Most of the state lives within 30 minutes of the state line and ALL of the state lives within 45-50 minutes of the state line; this is not true in most of the South, in Texas, in California. Much of the state commutes out of state for work, accordingly, particularly in the wealthy DC suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.

Within our small, oddly-stretched land area lie very diverse cultures. Yes, yes, it's true in Pennsylvania and California and Kansas too, but it's much more striking here. Most political, economic, sociological or demographic maps of the state look like really bad acid trips, and Picasso-esque gerrymandering here is almost a science into itself. The result of this is that you are better off thinking of Maryland as eight states united by a tax form: Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Southern Maryland, Western Maryland, Eastern Shore, Baltimore City, suburban Baltimore ("the County") and ex-urban Baltimore (e.g. Harford County and elsewhere).

Read more about this fight for civil rights, and learn what you can do here.