Letter: Getting petition, marriage issues straight
Letter to the editor, Beverly Citizen | March 9, 2006
To the editor:
In the face of overwhelming evidence that thousands of signatures were stolen for the anti-gay marriage petition and just days before prosecutors from Attorney General Tom Reilly's office launched a criminal investigation into the matter, Gail Burke argues that we should make it even easier for signatures to be stolen (Citizen petition should be easier - Feb. 23). She claims that Massachusetts is known as a "difficult state" in which to collect signatures, but the exact opposite is true.
As a gay man who discovered that two of my Lafayette Street, Salem neighbors are sponsoring this petition to take my rights away (Philip and Carole Moran are two of the 30 original signers), I have taken a very personal interest in what's been going on. And I was in attendance at the statehouse fraud hearing last October where a national petition expert revealed just how profoundly negligent Massachusetts has been in protecting its system from being exploited by workers in the "professional" signature collection industry. While many other states have revised their laws to protect citizens against the aggressive fraudulent tactics of these "buck-a-signature" con artists, Massachusetts has done nothing.
At that hearing, I also got to hear one of the hired petition workers turned whistleblower explain how her Florida-based "crew" laughed about how easy it was to steal signatures in Massachusetts. She also reported that her co-workers liked to brag about how they could get gay citizens to sign a petition to take their own rights away.
Ms. Burke also complains that "there are only 60 days" in which to collect the 65,000+ signatures required to move a petition forward as if this is some great burden. This inference is ridiculous considering that Arno Political Consultants, the California firm hired to coordinate signature collection, claims on their Web site (www.apcusa.com) that they have collected as many as 1.2 million signatures in 19 days.
But let's look beyond the fraud to the facts of the proposed amendment. Perhaps Gail Burke could explain why it is so important to her that I be forced to lie and say that Ray, my partner of 12 years, is my step-brother so that he can visit me in the hospital. As I am likely to die before Ray (I have a rare form of cancer), perhaps she could explain why it is so important to her that my partner, the man who has cared for me through my sickness, comforted me through the death of my grandfather and my house burning down and shared with me a deep commitment and love should be denied the automatic right to inherit what I leave behind. And perhaps she could explain why it is so important to her that I not be eligible for health insurance offered through my partner's employer.
More than 6,500 gay marriages have taken place over the last two years and not one straight marriage has been damaged as a result. People like Gail Burke may try to scare you into thinking that something bad will happen because I have the right to marry the person I love, but the truth is she is wrong and her actions are hateful and disgraceful. Gail Burke, Philip and Carol Moran, keep your hands off my family. While we try to live in peace, you attack us and try to take our rights away. Shame on you.
John Hosty
Lafayette Street
Salem
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