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"Marriage Amendment
A group of Maine residents affiliated with Families for America has started a petition drive aimed to direct the Legislature to consider joining a federal constitutional convention. The goal of the convention would be an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. Should the U.S. Constitution be amended to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman?"


Same-sex marriage foes target Congress
By PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer


AUGUSTA — Maine opponents of same-sex marriage have joined a national effort to pressure Congress to introduce a constitutional amendment that prohibits the marriages or gives states the power to ban them. The effort involves referendum drives in participating states. The ballot questions, if approved, would require legislatures around the country to decide annually whether to call for a constitutional convention.

The Maine campaign, which is being led by Lewis Hassell of Winterport, is part of an effort to persuade 34 states - a two-thirds majority - to call a constitutional convention unless Congress votes on its own to submit a constitutional ban to the states for ratification.

If 34 states call a constitutional convention in the face of congressional inaction, the convention would have the same power Congress has to draft a constitutional amendment and submit it to the states. Either way, 38 states - a three-fourths majority - would have to ratify any change in the U.S. Constitution before the amendment takes effect.

The Secretary of State's Office has told Maine organizers that they can begin circulating petitions for the proposed referendum.


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Brutal assault was gay-bashing, he says
By Joan Treadway
Staff writer

Paul Willis, a local writer, has a pleasant last memory of early morning Sunday, before darkness lifted. He and another writer, from out of town, had been chatting in a Bourbon Street bar, and he agreed to help the man find his way back to his accommodations, near the French Quarter.

Willis' next memory, from a few hours later, is more gruesome: "I found that I was at Charity Hospital, covered with blood."

Willis, 41, who is well-known in New Orleans as the acting executive director of the Tennessee Williams Festival, was released from the hospital Friday afternoon, the victim of what he and others believe was gay-bashing, a brutal attack that doctors told him probably will leave him blind in his right eye.

Officer Johnette Williams, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Police Department, said that the incident, which occurred about 4:30 a.m. in the 1200 block of Royal Street, is being investigated and has not yet been classified, as a hate crime or anything else.