Gay rights group to open office in Duval to advance its agenda
The Florida Times-Union
March 30, 2006
Gay rights group to open office in Duval to advance its agenda
By JEFF BRUMLEY
The Times-Union
A Florida gay-rights organization is opening an office in Jacksonville to boost its ongoing statewide push for same-sex marriage and adoption rights and to put a human face on the homosexual community in North Florida.
Alain Raymond, field organizer of the new Equality Florida office, said he has already launched efforts to build a coalition of "gay, lesbian and transgender" groups in the region. Their goal will be to generate a more powerful lobby in Tallahassee, elect "fair-minded" legislators and defend gay rights.
Open house Equality Florida, a St. Petersburg gay rights organization, will host an open house for its new North Florida office at 6:30 p.m. todayat St. Luke's Metropolitan Community Church, 1140 S. McDuff Ave. in Jacksonville. For more information contact North Florida Field Organizer Alain Raymond at (904) 807-5928, or by e-mail at alaineqfl.org. For more information about Equality Florida, visit the Web at www.eqfl.org.
Raymond, 31, predicted success in the long run as Floridians begin to see gays as people who work hard, pay taxes, raise families and deserve equal protection under the law.
"When you get to know someone who is discriminated against, that's when you start feeling their pain," Raymond said. "And that's when we will have progress."
But critic Mat Staver predicted the office will make no such progress.
Equality Florida has been ineffective in opposing the ongoing movement to ban same-sex marriage in Florida, said Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal advocacy group in Orlando.
It also has repeatedly failed to overturn an existing state law prohibiting same-sex couples from adopting children, Staver said.
St. Petersburg-based Equality Florida has offices in Miami and Orlando and 15,000 supporters, spokesman Brian Winfield said. It staffs an office in Tallahassee when the Legislature is in session.
Winfield said the organization has about 500 active members in the Jacksonville area.
It has actively campaigned against the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment, which defines marriage as being solely between one man and one woman.
The Florida Supreme Court recently approved the ballot language for the proposed amendment.
The coalition promoting the amendment has collected nearly 470,000 of the 611,000 signatures needed to place the proposed amendment on the November 2008 ballot, Staver said.
The coalition failed in its original goal of placing the amendment on the November 2006 ballot because it did not collect those signatures by Feb. 1.
Equality Florida's new Jacksonville office will help get the word out about the unfairness of the proposed amendment, Raymond said.
"The more that conversation is had, the more people will come to our side," he said.
jeff.brumleyjacksonville.com, (904) 359-4310
This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/033006/met_21489404.shtml.
March 30, 2006
Gay rights group to open office in Duval to advance its agenda
By JEFF BRUMLEY
The Times-Union
A Florida gay-rights organization is opening an office in Jacksonville to boost its ongoing statewide push for same-sex marriage and adoption rights and to put a human face on the homosexual community in North Florida.
Alain Raymond, field organizer of the new Equality Florida office, said he has already launched efforts to build a coalition of "gay, lesbian and transgender" groups in the region. Their goal will be to generate a more powerful lobby in Tallahassee, elect "fair-minded" legislators and defend gay rights.
Open house Equality Florida, a St. Petersburg gay rights organization, will host an open house for its new North Florida office at 6:30 p.m. todayat St. Luke's Metropolitan Community Church, 1140 S. McDuff Ave. in Jacksonville. For more information contact North Florida Field Organizer Alain Raymond at (904) 807-5928, or by e-mail at alaineqfl.org. For more information about Equality Florida, visit the Web at www.eqfl.org.
Raymond, 31, predicted success in the long run as Floridians begin to see gays as people who work hard, pay taxes, raise families and deserve equal protection under the law.
"When you get to know someone who is discriminated against, that's when you start feeling their pain," Raymond said. "And that's when we will have progress."
But critic Mat Staver predicted the office will make no such progress.
Equality Florida has been ineffective in opposing the ongoing movement to ban same-sex marriage in Florida, said Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal advocacy group in Orlando.
It also has repeatedly failed to overturn an existing state law prohibiting same-sex couples from adopting children, Staver said.
St. Petersburg-based Equality Florida has offices in Miami and Orlando and 15,000 supporters, spokesman Brian Winfield said. It staffs an office in Tallahassee when the Legislature is in session.
Winfield said the organization has about 500 active members in the Jacksonville area.
It has actively campaigned against the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment, which defines marriage as being solely between one man and one woman.
The Florida Supreme Court recently approved the ballot language for the proposed amendment.
The coalition promoting the amendment has collected nearly 470,000 of the 611,000 signatures needed to place the proposed amendment on the November 2008 ballot, Staver said.
The coalition failed in its original goal of placing the amendment on the November 2006 ballot because it did not collect those signatures by Feb. 1.
Equality Florida's new Jacksonville office will help get the word out about the unfairness of the proposed amendment, Raymond said.
"The more that conversation is had, the more people will come to our side," he said.
jeff.brumleyjacksonville.com, (904) 359-4310
This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/033006/met_21489404.shtml.
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