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Anti-gay marriage flier angers Alabama Democrats

Anti-gay marriage flier angers Alabama Democrats

An Alabama GOP flier that accused a Democratic candidate of supporting same-sex marriage because she failed to sign a pledge against it has outraged Democrats, who are calling it "slanderous." The flier, sponsored by the Republican Legislative Committee, stated that Democrat Gloria Dolbare had not signed a Christian Coalition pledge to support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages in the state. In a special election last month, she lost a bid to fill the seat vacated by the death of her minister husband. The flier read, "Let Gloria Dolbare know God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" Dolbare, a school teacher from Bigbee, said she never saw the pledge form and possibly set it aside with other mail during the time she was campaigning. "I never dreamed how dirty politics could be," said Dolbare, widow of state representative Jeff Dolbare, who died last year of cancer. "I don't think I've ever seen an attack of this type," Carolyn Gibson, president of the Federation of Democratic Women, told The Birmingham News in a story Wednesday. "This is a perfect example of literature that I think is just created by hate." "It was a slanderous thing," said Lee Williams, the Democratic chairman in Clarke County, part of which is in District 65. The first page of the flier shows a classical painting that appears to represent the Garden of Eden and a nearly naked man and a woman with a copy of the Christian Coalition pledge covering her body. A photo on the left side of the flier's second page shows two smiling men on a porch. One is kneeling on one knee before the other and holding the man's left hand in both of his own. "God made Adam and Eve," the flier reads, "but Gloria Dolbare wants you to meet...Adam and Steve!" "That was an issue that we thought she was vulnerable on, not because the issue was the gay marriage issue, just because she would not take a stand on the issue," said Leland Whaley, a consultant to the committee. "It's been part of the legislative debate." Dolbare said she ran for Alabama's southwest District 65 at the request of her husband. She lost January 25 to Republican Nick Williams, who had signed the pledge against same-sex marriage. Williams got only 38% of the vote, but Dolbare, who got 33%, apparently was hurt by a Democratic write-in candidate, Wayne Lathan, who got 29%. The amendment against same-sex marriage is the Alabama Christian Coalition's top issue in the legislative session that began Tuesday, and the coalition began circulating the petition last year among state lawmakers. Alabama already has a law, passed in 1998, that bans same-sex marriages. But Christian Coalition president John Giles said the marriage amendment would "etch in stone and further secure the statute." (AP)

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