Posted on 06/08/2012 10:08:17 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
ANNAPOLIS Organizers of a petition against Marylands same-sex marriage law have collected enough valid voter signatures to send the law to a November referendum, state election officials said Thursday.
The state Board of Elections announced that local elections boards have verified 70,039 signatures on the petition to force a statewide vote on the law exceeding the 55,736 signatures that were required to be turned in by June 30.
The Maryland Marriage Alliance has led the petition effort against the law, which was passed in February by the General Assembly. The group says it submitted more than 122,000 signatures last week to the state.
Were ecstatic that Marylands citizens are guaranteed the opportunity to vote on such a critical issue, said MMA Executive Director Derek McCoy, who added that the group will continue collecting signatures through the end of the month. Multiple thousands of people across the state are energized by this issue and want to see it go to referendum.
Local elections boards must still count the nearly 50,000 remaining signatures on the petition.
And they must start their review of the 28,000 signatures turned in by a group hoping to force a referendum on the states new congressional district map.
State officials say the petitions workload is virtually unprecedented in a state that has had just one successful referendum effort in the past 20 years, but that elections officials are up to the challenge.
Theres no question that its a lot of work and it will mean extra hours, said Mary Cramer Wagner, director of the state Board of Elections voter registration division. But the [local boards] will get it done.
Elections officials must count all of the marriage signatures by June 18 and all of the congressional redistricting signatures by June 20.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
> To you, same-sex and homosexual have exactly the same meaning
I’m sorry if you don’t know how language works, but yes, synonyms *do* have the same meaning. And no, it’s not “to me”. That’s what the terms mean. In the English language. Which we are speaking.
I would ask you what ‘homosexual’ means “to you”, but I know you wouldn’t be capable of providing any meaning other than “attracted to the same sex”, so I won’t even waste my time.
> to me they do not, because one has a much more negative connotation
So basically you just have some kind of personal emotional reaction to one of the two synonyms, and that means that there’s some reason to “correct” people on their already-correct usage. You might as well go around “correcting” people who use the word “dog” and tell them they should *actually* be using the word “canine”, because you’re “taking language back”.
Nonsense arguments like this make the rest of us look bad. Don’t make yourself a caricature...it just makes the libs’ jobs easier.
That you can’t grasp the concept of words having meaning beyond their dictionary definition is not my problem.
>I would ask you what homosexual means to you, but I know you wouldnt be capable of providing any meaning other than attracted to the same sex, so I wont even waste my time.
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