Tag Archives: ACLU

Department of Liquor Control

County (Ab)using Liquor Stores for Political Speech

DLC liquor store flyerAdam Pagnucco sent Montgomery County Attorney Marc Hansen the following letter:

Hello, Mr. Hansen.  This is Adam Pagnucco.  I am working with a group of folks who are advocating for Delegate Bill Frick’s legislation to allow competition in the county’s alcohol industry.

I am in receipt of the attached flyer which I understand is being distributed in county liquor stores.  The flyer is unquestionably a political communication and not a commercial advertisement.

As you know, the state’s Court of Special Appeals has ruled that the county “may speak to advance its existing policies and programs, to advocate for policy changes, and to advocate against policy changes.”  http://www.mdcourts.gov/opinions/cosa/2015/0175s14.pdf   However, during the Question B campaign of 2012, the county ran ads for its point of view on Ride On buses and denied the Fraternal Order of Police the same opportunity.  ACLU of Maryland protested that and the county decided to allow FOP ads, but it was too late in the campaign for the ads to appear.  The ACLU wrote, “When the government privileges one side of a political debate in a forum open to private speakers, as Montgomery County is doing here, it engages in viewpoint discrimination clearly prohibited by the First Amendment.”  http://www.aclu-md.org/press_room/82

As the County Attorney, here is my question to you.  If the county is using its facilities to distribute political speech, as it did with the Ride On buses, can county citizens with a different point of view use those same facilities to also distribute political speech?  In other words, can we request that our flyers be distributed along with the county’s flyers?

Adam Pagnucco

It looks bad that the County has had time to arrange to get these fliers into county owned liquor stores even as the Department of Liquor Control caused a major snafu with delivery screw-ups in the week before New Year’s Eve.

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marriage equality

Achieving Marriage Equality in Maryland

marriage winElection Night 2012

In a blog post today, Andrew Sullivan hails Freedom to Marry and attacks the Human Rights Campaign for their respective roles in the national fight for marriage equality. I’m not going to do the traditional snip from his post because you need to read the full argument to really do it justice and it’s made in the context of a scathing book review.

I have no interest in defending the book (haven’t read it, don’t plan to) in this post or the overall record of either F2M or HRC. But the record needs correction in terms of the roles that each organization played here in Maryland if only to show that the overall picture is far more nuanced than Andrew presents. I was President of Equality Maryland at the time and in a reasonable position to know much of the background, so here goes.

Freedom to Marry was a barrier to progress in Maryland. Its leader, Evan Wolfson, had absolutely no faith in our ability to win a referendum. Even after President Obama endorsed marriage equality and polls showed that support increased further in our state–strongly Democratic and with a large share of African-American voters–Evan still remained adamantly opposed.

Not only did Evan refuse to invest in Maryland but his gatekeeper role with major donors made it much harder to raise the needed funds (note: I am not the anonymous source in the linked article). Even more galling, F2M continued to send fundraising emails into Maryland but never mentioned its unwillingness to get behind the referendum effort.

In contrast, HRC played an absolutely essential role here in Maryland, providing money and people vital to support our media and organizational efforts. I know it’s not Andrew’s favorite group (understatement) but its critical role in Maryland should be acknowledged and applauded.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley also raised money and provided real leadership in the State. Of course, Equality Maryland had worked hard on this issue for a very long time and focused its efforts and resources virtually entirely on the referendum fight. Many others, such as the Maryland’s wonderful and large LGBT Caucus, the ACLU, NAACP, Latino organizations, and the unions also lent welcome and necessary support. It was a team effort.

marriage win2

We were all so happy and proud that night in 2012 when Maryland became the very first state to uphold marriage equality at the ballot box. I know Evan played a wonderfully positive role in other states and, more importantly, in building up organizational support for the overall movement. In short, he’s done a lot of good work.

But we won marriage in Maryland in spite of him.

 

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