State gets mixed results in wet/dry votes; nation decides other issues
- Nov 24, 2008 - comment
Baptists in three Alabama counties won their fight against the expansion of alcohol sales Nov. 4, while the city of Arab and Cleburne County both voted to go wet.
The wet/dry votes were part of a smorgasbord of moral and ethical issues on ballots across the nation on Election Day 2008.
Geneva, Randolph and Blount counties all defeated the proposed expansion of alcohol sales:
• Geneva — 5,637 to 5,520
• Randolph — 5,097 to 4,756
• Blount — 13,736 to 10,010
And the victory was sweet, said Mark Towns, a deacon at First Baptist Church, Oneonta, in Friendship Baptist Association and chairman of Keep Blount County Special, a group of concerned citizens who lobbied for the dry vote to win out.
“We’re just thrilled about the outcome — very happy,” Towns said. “We had a lot of people work hard from all ends of the county, and God blessed us in that.”
Joe Godfrey, executive director of Alabama Citizens Action Program (ALCAP), said he’s excited, too, for the counties that were able to hold off the expansion of alcohol sales.
“We are grateful for the leadership in those counties and the church and community leaders who fought so hard to defeat that,” he said.
After holding off a wet/dry referendum in 2006 by only an 18-vote margin, opponents of alcohol sales in Arab saw the city go wet this year by a vote of 2,100 to 1,767.
And Cleburne County, which already permitted sales of warm beer in certain stores, voted 3,278 to 2,386 to go fully wet.
“We (ALCAP and Baptist leadership in those areas)are disappointed but we hope that someday maybe we’ll have another opportunity to overturn that decision,” Godfrey said.
In other states Nov. 4, voters decided on moral and ethical issues ranging from the sanctity of marriage to greyhound racing to stem-cell research.
California voters overruled the state Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay “marriage” and in the process handed the nationwide pro-family movement one of its most significant victories ever.
Voters passed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It is the first time that voters in a state have overturned a court’s decision on the issue. The amendment reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
The victory was but one of four “gay rights” ballot initiatives where conservatives were victorious. Florida adopted a marriage amendment — passing it 62–38 percent and surpassing the necessary 60 percent supermajority — while Arizona passed its own marriage amendment, 56–44 percent, two years after citizens there had become the first state to defeat an amendment. Three-fifths (30) of the states now have adopted a marriage amendment.
Meanwhile, voters in Arkansas approved a measure preventing adoptive or foster care children from being placed in homes with couples who live together out of wedlock, whether those adults are heterosexual or homosexual. Nearly 57 percent of voters supported the ban.
The only loss of the night for conservatives pertaining to “gay rights” came in Connecticut, where voters by a margin of 59–41 percent rejected a once-every-two-decades question asking whether a constitutional convention should be held.
Conservatives had hoped to use the convention to legalize direct initiative in the state and then to gather enough signatures to place a marriage amendment on the ballot.
Voters in five states also cast their ballots on measures dealing with life issues, but pro-lifers came up short in all five cases.
California and South Dakota voted down ballot initiatives concerning abortion while Colorado defeated a constitutional amendment granting legal protections to “any human being from the moment of conception.”
South Dakota’s Measure 11 would have criminalized abortion unless done in cases of rape or incest or to save the life the mother.
It also contained a health exception as long as it pertained to a “substantial and irreversible” physical impairment to a major organ.
California Proposition 4 would have required doctors to notify parents or family members before performing abortions on unwed minors.
Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing embryonic stem cell research.
In Washington state, voters passed an assisted suicide initiative permitting doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for terminally ill patients.
Arkansas voters approved a lottery in one of several mixed results across the nation on the gambling front. Voters also repealed gambling restrictions in Missouri and OK’d the return of slot machines to Maryland.
Victories for anti-gambling forces included rejections of casinos in Ohio and Maine and the outlawing of greyhound racing in Massachusetts, an issue that focused as much on animal rights as gambling, according to Carey Thiel, executive director of Grey2K USA.
Marijuana was also embraced in two states in Election Day balloting across the nation.
In Massachusetts, voters approved a ballot initiative for a $100 civil fine for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana to replace criminal penalties. In Michigan, voters approved the use of marijuana for medical conditions, making it the 13th state in the nation to open a door for marijuana via the disputed medicinal rationale.
And in Fayetteville, Ark., another nod for marijuana was approved by a 87–13 percent margin in favor of an ordinance stipulating that marijuana violations should be the lowest priority for the city’s police officers.
In another area of concern, South Carolina voters supported an amendment to the state constitution that changes the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16, according to CNN. (BP, TAB)
This article is reprinted from the November 13, 2008, issue of The Alabama Baptist, the newspaper of the Alabama Baptist State Convention.
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