Jun 08, 2006  |  By: ZACK HUDSON  | COMMENTS     

Alabama voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage June 6, the same day Patricia Todd came one step closer to becoming the first openly gay member of the Alabama Legislature.

The Alabama secretary of state’s office will not release results from the June 6 election until they are officially certified on June 16, according to a staff member.

Unofficial returns reported by the Montgomery Advertiser showed the gay marriage amendment passing with 81.24 percent of the vote with 99.94 percent of precincts tallied statewide.

In the race for the District 54 seat in the Alabama House, Todd placed first among five candidates in the Democratic primary, taking 33.28 percent of the vote, according to the Advertiser. She faces Gaynell Hendricks, who received 28.65 percent of the vote, in a July 18 runoff. There is no Republican challenger for the seat.

“I’m tired today,” Todd said in an interview June 7, while still sounding optimistic.

The massive vote for the anti-gay marriage amendment did not make her victory bittersweet, she said.

“We knew the marriage amendment was going to pass overwhelmingly. It was not surprising. It was just a matter of how big the margin was going to be,” Todd said.

Todd was upbeat on her chances for victory in the runoff, noting that she has been endorsed by two of her primary competitors. She also theorized that some gay voters in her Birmingham-based district crossed over to vote in the Republican primary to help defeat Roy Moore’s bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

Moore, an outspoken gay rights opponent ousted as Alabama’s chief justice for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments, was easily defeated Tuesday by incumbent Gov. Bob Riley, receiving only 33 percent of the vote.

Todd was endorsed by the national Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, likely the most significant involvement from national gay rights groups in the Alabama election.

Equality Alabama, a statewide gay rights organization, did not seek or receive funds to fight the marriage amendment from organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, according to Howard Bayless, Equality Alabama board chair.

“I would be concerned about putting money in Alabama. Yes, resources could help us, but we haven’t organized ourselves yet,” he said, indicating that the state’s budding gay rights movement is largely focused on AIDS activism.

The Task Force did not respond to inquiries.

Carrie Evans, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, said HRC “certainly reached out” to Equality Alabama. HRC offered to “activate its membership” in Alabama, but did not contribute any money to defeat the amendment, she said.

Evans said current HRC priorities are aimed at fighting the proposed federal Marriage Protection Amendment, which was defeated in the U.S. Senate on June 7, and for state amendments to ban gay marriage in Wisconsin and Arizona.

Other states set to vote

In addition to Wisconsin, voters in Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia will decide on state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage this year. A citizens’ initiative is trying to put an amendment on the ballot in Arizona, according to HRC.

The Pennsylvania House also passed a gay marriage amendment this week, but the complex process in that state means the issue cannot go onto the ballot until next year at the earliest.

Including Alabama, 17 states now ban gay marriage in their constitutions, the Task Force reports.

Passage of Alabama’s amendment will “enshrine a firewall of protection of the definition of marriage” in Alabama’s constitution, said John Giles, president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama.

One brochure claimed that allowing gay couples to marry would cause “the health care system to stagger and collapse.”