Maryland's newly enacted gay-rights law may be put up for voter approval if right-wing opponents are successful with their petition drive.
The group Take Back Maryland met a June 30 deadline to turn in petitions representing 3 percent of the vote cast in the last gubernatorial election. The group is modeled after a similar "take back" effort that formed in reaction to passage of legislation on gay civil unions in Vermont.
Tres Kerns, chairman of the self-described "pro-family coalition," claims that the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2001 "would give special government protection to homosexual behavior, and would take away the right of Marylanders to freely associate and live by their own moral code."
The legislation passed with the strong support of Gov. Parris Glendening. Similar laws enacted by county governments already cover more than half of the state's population.
Take Back Maryland met the initial petition deadline by turning in more than 15,376 valid signatures by May 31. Those filed on June 30 bring the total to about 54,000. The petitions will be sent to county boards of election where signatures will be checked against the voter rolls for validity and duplicates eliminated. At least 46,128 signatures must survive the validation process in order for the petition to qualify.
It is common for petitions to contain about 20 percent invalid and duplicate signatures. If this hold true in Maryland, then the measure will not qualify for the ballot. The first batch of petitions submitted in May had an invalidation rate of about 13 percent. Gay rights supporters are hoping that as Take Back Maryland moved beyond its core supporters, the percent of invalid signatures increased dramatically.
County election boards have until July 20 to complete the process of certifying signatures. If enough qualify, then the law will not go into effect on Oct. 1 but will be suspended pending the outcome of the November 2002 election.
Blake Humphreys is managing director of Free State Justice the principle gay and lesbian organization behind enactment of the civil-rights bill. Initially he was optimistic that the right-wingers would not gather sufficient signatures. He based that on an indication that the Roman Catholic Church would not support the petition effort in the heavily Catholic state.
But those hopes were dashed in mid-June when the Maryland Catholic Conference of bishops published an article on the Take Back Maryland effort in their newsletter and prominently displayed the petition on their website.
The site also contained an April letter by Baltimore Cardinal William H. Keeler opposing the recently passed legislation. He wrote, "We must be vigilant against the prospect of the legislation's use as a springboard for a political agenda that includes same-sex 'marriage' and other homosexual practice."
Conference director Richard J. Dowling told the Washington Post that the Catholic Church opposes the Maryland law because it "legitimizes homosexual conduct or practice."
Humphreys takes comfort in the fact that the petitioners gathered barely half of their goal of 100,000 signatures. He always assumed that they would have to take their case to the voters. He says they are in the planning stage of shaping a campaign to raise the money and "educate the people of Maryland about discrimination."
He is optimistic that with the long time to prepare, the strong support of the Governor who cannot run for reelection, and the history of more than half the state already living under gay rights laws, that the measure will be defeated.
