Arts & Entertainment
Anatomy of a victory
Behind the scenes of the Maryland marriage battle
Question 6 supporters and opponents placed signs outside Northwood Elementary School in Baltimore on Nov. 6. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Edgewater, Md., residents Adri Eathorne and Kim-May Hinken arrived at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis to visit their friend, Scott Bowling, shortly before the polls closed at 8 p.m. on Election Day. The three of them nervously awaited the results of the referendum on Maryland’s same-sex marriage law as the slowly began to trickle in.
More than four hours later, they learned Question 6 had narrowly passed.
“We closed his hospital room door,” Eathorne, who has been with Hinken nine years, says. “We closed his hospital room door so we could [yell] ‘Yeah!’ and high-five each other and hug and kiss and cry.”
The passage of Question 6 by a 52-48 percent margin on Nov. 6 capped off an anxious night of waiting for the hundreds of people and dozens of reporters who had gathered at the Baltimore Soundstage.
One of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s staffers wrote on a napkin during lunch on Election Day that the referendum would pass with 53 percent support. Congressman Elijah Cummings made the same prediction during an interview with the Washington Blade earlier in the day outside a Northeast Baltimore polling place at which the governor, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Brendon Ayanbadejo of the Baltimore Ravens greeted voters.
“I had a pretty good sense as we were heading into Election Day that it was going to hold,” O’Malley said in a Blade interview this week. “I had a pretty good sense in the course of those last 10 days that it was on a good positive trajectory.”
Josh Levin, campaign manager for Marylanders for Marriage Equality, was backstage with the governor, Rawlings-Blake and several other elected officials watching the results come in. President Obama had already won re-election by the time Politico reported shortly before midnight that Question 6 had passed with 84 percent of precincts reporting.
Levin and others remained hesitant to declare victory because Montgomery County had yet to report election results. (Question 6 passed in the county by a 65-35 percent margin.)
“Once we figured that out then I started breathing a little more deeply,” O’Malley says. “Then when the Montgomery County numbers came in and we were up to 51 [percent,] the night seemed to be coming into perspective. We were very reluctant to claim a victory of course until we had enough of the numbers in.”
Levin last week, while cleaning out Marylanders for Marriage Equality’s Baltimore office, says Question 6 was leading throughout the night.
“We watched it grow to 45,000 votes or so,” he says. “It shrank at one point to about 12,000. But right around midnight we felt like we had a pretty good sense of where things were. And so I went back to talk through what still could happen, what’s still out, where do we think that’s coming from and made the decision to go up on stage and declare victory from there.”
“There was confidence once the results started to come in,” says gay state Sen. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery County.) “There was confidence all night long, it’s just a matter of when do you say it. And because we had never won before, there’s no desire to jinx yourself. I think you’re more cautious than you would have ever been.”
The Washington Post projected Question 6 had passed just as O’Malley, Rawlings-Blake, Levin and others took to the stage to declare victory. Those gathered inside the Baltimore Soundstage became euphoric when lesbian state Del. Maggie McIntosh (D-Baltimore City) announced the referendum had passed. People began to cry. Gay state Dels. Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City) and Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery County) were among those who started dancing once the governor and other dignitaries stepped away from the podium.
O’Malley instrumental in fundraising
Election Day capped off a long and often tumultuous effort for Maryland’s same-sex marriage advocates that began in 1997 when three state lawmakers introduced the first bill that would have allowed nuptials for gays and lesbians.
Equality Maryland, which nearly closed in June 2011, and the American Civil Liberties Union in 2004 filed a lawsuit on behalf of Lisa Polyak and Gita Deane and eight other same-sex couples and a gay widow who sought the right to marry in the state. The Maryland Court of Appeals in 2007 ultimately upheld the constitutionality of the state’s ban on marriage for gays and lesbians.
State lawmakers in 2011 narrowly defeated a same-sex marriage bill, but legislators approved it in February. O’Malley signed the law on March 1.
Governor Martin O’Malley speaks to reporters outside Northwood Elementary School in Baltimore on Nov. 6. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
The governor soon emerged as the law’s most prominent supporter, especially after the Maryland Marriage Alliance collected more than 160,000 signatures to force a referendum on the issue. Marylanders for Marriage Equality turned to O’Malley, among others, in early August to help bolster their then-anemic fundraising efforts.
“We found ourselves in a situation where polling looked good, we felt good about what we were building, but we simply weren’t bringing in money at the rate that we needed to,” Levin says. “We as a campaign and with our board members we sort of rang the bell a little bit and talked to the governor, got Maggie McIntosh more involved. The ACLU redoubled their efforts. And I think brought to bear all the efforts that helped us [reach] the financial goals that we needed to.”
Levin said in June his group could effectively defend the law with between $5-$7 million, in spite of some observers who said Marylanders for Marriage Equality needed to raise up to $12 million.
O’Malley headlined a star-studded fundraiser gay former Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman co-hosted at a New York City hotel in September that raised more than $100,000 for the pro-Question 6 group. The governor also appeared at an Oct. 2 fundraiser with D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) at gay Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf’s Logan Circle home. Former National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his wife Chan announced a $100,000 donation to Marylanders for Marriage Equality during the fundraiser that Chip DiPaula, Jr., former Gov. Bob Ehrlich, Jr.’s gay chief-of-staff, attended alongside Mizeur and others.
The Human Rights Campaign contributed more than $1.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions to the pro-Question 6 campaign. Freedom to Marry, which initially declined to join the coalition defending the state’s same-sex marriage law, said it invested more than $200,000 into the campaign. This figure includes the $70,000 it gave that helped Marylanders for Maryland Equality air their radio ad highlighting President Obama’s support of marriage rights for same-sex couples in the days leading up to Election Day.
“HRC provided so much of the backbone to this whole effort,” Madaleno says. “They were absolutely critical.”
Marylanders for Marriage Equality ultimately raised $6 million — they consistently outraised the Maryland Marriage Alliance throughout the Question 6 campaign. The ACLU and other organized labor groups contributed more than $1 million to Marylanders for Marriage Equality.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Republican hedge fund manager Paul Singer both donated $250,000 to the pro-Question 6 campaign. The bulk of the 11,000 people who contributed to Marylanders for Marriage Equality, however, live in Maryland.
“We proved from going to the state that nobody thought could win to being the second-widest margin after Maine among the four is pretty cool,” Levin says. “And I want to really say the team that was here through the legislative campaign that figured out, that believed in doing Maryland when nobody else did — the leadership of folks like Sultan [Shakir] and Kevin [Nix], Rich Madaleno and Luke Clippinger and all the others.”
One of the proudest moments of the campaign for Levin came when Marylanders for Marriage Equality was able to counter a Maryland Marriage Alliance television ad that claimed Question 6 would force schools to teach same-sex marriage with their own ad eight hours later that featured Baltimore County teacher Pamela Gaddy. Levin showed it to McIntosh, HRC President Chad Griffin, former O’Malley adviser Joe Bryce and his wife Kristen and a handful of others shortly after he arrived at a campaign fundraiser at DiPaula’s home before he put it on the air on Oct. 26.
“We were ready and able to do it that fast, versus the stories that so many other folks who worked in California [on the campaign against Proposition 8] told just having to figure it out there,” Levin says. “The lessons they learned they gave us and we applied. And we took a Maryland angle on it, putting up an African-American, Baltimore-area schoolteacher to just go, ‘That’s not true, you know.’ When we looked at it a week later, their argument wasn’t resonating. People just weren’t buying it, according to our research.”
Obama, NAACP endorsements key
O’Malley, Levin and Mizeur all noted Obama’s public support of marriage rights for gays and lesbians and his endorsement of the same-sex marriage law garnered additional support among black Marylanders.
In addition to the radio ad featuring the president, Marylanders for Marriage Equality also sent a mailing that contained his and first lady Michelle Obama’s statements in support of marriage rights for same-sex couples to 200,000 African-American households in the state. (Baltimore Black Pride co-chair Meredith Moise was handing out these fliers on Election Day as she spoke with voters outside a polling place at a Northeast Baltimore elementary school.)
“It was important that we echoed their support,” Levin says.
The NAACP’s support of Question 6 and particularly television ads that featured Julian Bond, the civil rights organization’s chair emeritus, and Revs. Delman Coates of Mount Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton and Donté Hickman of Southern Baptist Church in Baltimore appear to have resonated with voters in the predominantly black Charm City.
Question 6 passed by a 57-43 percent margin in Baltimore City. It lost by slightly more than 4,300 votes in Prince George’s County.
A Public Policy Polling survey in May found 55 percent of black Marylanders would vote for the law, compared to 36 percent who said they would oppose it. A Hart Research Associates survey conducted in late July found 44 percent of African-American voters would support Question 6, compared to 45 percent who said they would vote against it. A Gonzales Research poll in September noted 44 percent of black Marylanders backed marriage rights for same-sex couples, compared to 52 percent who oppose nuptials for gays and lesbians. An Associated Press exit poll indicates roughly half of black Maryland voters voted against Question 6.
Maryland Marriage Alliance Chair Derek McCoy, Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville and others who opposed the law repeatedly criticized and even mocked the NAACP, Obama, Coates, Hickman and other prominent black leaders who backed marriage rights for same-sex couples in the state. Some Question 6 opponents resorted to increasingly homophobic rhetoric during appearances at black churches and other public forums in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Pastor Luke Robinson of Quinn Chapel AME Church in Frederick even suggested during a sparsely attended rally against the same-sex marriage law at a city park on Nov. 4 that Superstorm Sandy struck New York City less than three weeks after Bloomberg donated $250,000 to Marylanders for Marriage Equality.
“It pretty clearly was having an effect,” Levin says. “I don’t think the other guys would have been bringing it up as often if it hadn’t been.”
The Maryland State Conference of the NAACP and the organization’s Prince George’s County and Baltimore branches in particular factored prominently in the pro-Question 6 campaign.
Bob Ross, president of the Prince George’s County Branch of the NAACP, organized phone banks and canvassing efforts ahead of Election Day. He also spoke about his gay brother who had lived in the closet for years during a Nov. 5 rally at the University of Maryland in College Park that O’Malley, Hoyer, Madaleno, state Sen. Allan Kittleman (R-Carroll and Howard Counties) and others attended.
“Surely we need to recognize not only the importance of their endorsement, but the amount of work that they did,” Levin says.
Couples busy planning weddings
With all the behind-the-scenes work that led to the passage of Question 6, the only thing that matters to those who plan to take advantage of the law once it officially takes effect on Jan. 1 is the fact they can legally marry the person they love.
“It was kind of like, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing about our wedding plans?’” says ShaDonna Jackson, a Hyattsville, Md., resident who plans to wed her partner of nearly four years, Latisha Smith. “We needed absolute certainty because it’s a serious matter. It’s like, ‘Oh my goodness everything depends on this, so we need to know.’ And now that we know, we are back to our wedding plans.”
Eathorne and Hinken, who chairs the annual Chesapeake Pride Festival, are planning to get married in Annapolis on the first day same-sex couples can legally marry in the state.
“We’ve waited so long for it to be legal in our home state that we really wanted to do it as soon as possible,” Eathorne says (they had a church wedding in 2007). Hinken also spoke in support of the same-sex marriage bill in front of the State House in Annapolis. “We just want to make that statement. And that’s one of the reasons why we want it to be ASAP. We’ve been together for nine years. We don’t need a big full-blown wedding. We had our thing. It is special and we do plan to acknowledge it and celebrate it in some way.”
Madaleno, who once again proposed to his husband Mark on stage at the Baltimore Soundstage after Question 6 passed, plans to have what he describes as their “renewal of vows” once they and their two children return from a family vacation at Walt Disney World in Florida in January. The couple married 11 years ago at their Bethesda church, but Madaleno said having the legal recognition will make it even more official.
“What will be different,” he says, “is we’re getting a license.”
Books
Dolly Parton biography puts her hardships into context
‘Ain’t Nobody’s Fool’ a highly researched tome not to be missed
‘Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton’
By Martha Ackmann
c.2026, St. Martin’s Press
$30/304 pages
Not too bright.
That’s what people once thought about you. Your language didn’t conform, you had your own sense of style, and you were ignorant about modern things and places and foods. But you were no dummy. You were different, and you had a secret: as in the new biography, “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton” by Martha Ackmann, you knew exactly where you were going.
When Avie Lee Owens and Lee Parton first married, they had the very basics: “two knives, two forks, two spoons, a skillet, a butcher knife, and an old iron kettle.” He was 17; she was 15. Babies came quick. The fourth one was named Dolly, after two great-aunts.
Almost from the time she could walk, Dolly sang. Before she was old enough to attend school, she wrote poetry, and she’d begun to notice rhythms and beats she could make with her fingers. As a schoolchild, she created her own musical instruments out of scraps, and she was eager to perform whenever anyone asked her – and they asked often, because Dolly Parton was a nice girl, and her sense of humor conveyed a warmth that drew people in.
Growing up in the Tennessee mountains, Parton was independent, shunning marriage and child-raising, instead focusing on a dream of being a star. By the time she was in high school, she’d had a regular gig on local television but she recognized that there were few opportunities for fame in the mountains, so she left for Nashville the day after high school graduation, with the snickers of naysayers ringing in her ears.
She stayed with an aunt and uncle there, and she beat the streets, dined on grocery store samples to get by, and missed her family and friends. And they worried about her, but they knew nothing would derail her plans. They knew Dolly would be fine.
As a friend said, “’She had her head on pretty good.’”
Chances are that if you’ve listened to music any time in the last 60 years, you’ve heard Dolly Parton through her words or her music or both. Now you need to learn more about her, and “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool” is where to do it.
Here’s a biography that grabs you on the first page with the tiniest bit of family tree, but not so much that you get bored with it. Author Martha Ackmann writes about Dolly Parton’s early life, putting hardships and experiences in context, both personally and historically. There are name-drops, but not overly so, as Ackmann takes you through Parton’s career, her heartbreaks, her marriage, and her years with Porter Wagoner, in detail but not dramatically embellished or outrageously told. It’s a biography that’s just right, sourced well and written with a fresh take that, like its subject, tells a good story.
Fans, of course, will want this highly researched book but music lovers of any age or type will eat it up. That means you, so use up that Christmas gift certificate. “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool” just shines.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Movies
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Celebrating iconic film 35 years after its release
Hard as it is to believe for those who were around when it happened, “Thelma and Louise” celebrates the 35th anniversary of its release this year.
Deeply popular with both critics and audiences at the time, its reputation continues to ride high; it’s a movie that manages to exist within a nexus of intersecting genres – the “buddy picture”, the “crime thriller,” the “action adventure,” the” “western,” the “neo-noir” – by blending them seamlessly into a crowd-pleasing wild ride of a story, all while delivering a powerful feminist message of outrage, defiance, and empowerment.
And no, “Thelma and Louise” is not a “queer movie” – but it feels like one.
That’s partly because It exists within another genre, too: “lesbian noir,” which blossomed in its wake with films like “Bound” (1996) and has re-emerged in recent films like “Love Lies Bleeding” (2024) and “Honey, Don’t” (2025) – but that also stretches back across decades into the days of old Hollywood, when coded queer characters were a regular fixture in the seedy film noir classics of their time, never overtly identified as such but obvious to spot for anyone savvy enough to read the subtext. That’s why “Thelma and Louise” resonated (and continues to resonate) with lesbian and bisexual audiences who see themselves reflected in its two lead characters, even if there is nothing queer about their relationship — on the surface at least.
Of course, that can be a sore subject; subtext might seem like a “cop-out” for those who long for more open representation for LGBTQ people on the screen – but it’s everything when it comes to recognizing the queerness of older movies (and a lot of newer ones, too), and just because something is not explicitly stated, that doesn’t mean it’s being hidden. After all, most good stories rely on the transcendent power of nuance, which always relies on subtext to shine through. And if any movie relies upon subtext, “Thelma and Louise” is certainly one of them. In its masterfully crafted narrative of a weekend “girl’s trip” that goes horribly wrong, a lot of the most important information is left unspoken.
Take Thelma (Geena Davis), to start with: a naive young housewife whose husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) treats her like a possession, she blithely ignores his mediocrity and disregards – or at least, pretends to – his repressive tactics to control her, choosing instead to live in a tenuous illusion of “traditional” marriage dynamics; yet when her bestie Louise (Susan Sarandon) offers her a chance to escape for a weekend, she jumps at it – even if she has to skip the part where she asks his permission.
Louise (Susan Sarandon), a bit older and a lot more worldly, is a waitress who spends her days fending off the insults and advances of her male customers at the diner where she works; she sees Thelma’s situation clearly, and hopes that a temporary respite from Darryl will help her recognize the dead-end reality of her marriage. We understand this immediately, even though a direct word is never said about it, and she’s right, of course. They’ve barely even gotten on the road before Thelma’s longing for attention from someone other than her inadequate husband – a honky-tonk Lothario (Timothy Carhart) she meets in a roadhouse where they stop for drinks on the way out of town – leads to an attempted rape that is only prevented when Louise shoots the predator dead in the parking lot.
That killing is the catalyst that turns them into fugitives; as Louise rightly understands, there’s no evidence of sexual assault, just a dead body and a pair of runaway women, and the letter of the law is not on their side. But in truth, that fatal shot is fired not to save Thelma, who has already been freed from her would-be rapist’s clutches when it happens, but because Louise has traumatic memories – and a chip on her shoulder – over something that “happened in Texas,” years before. We never find out what it was that happened, and we don’t need to; our imaginations tell us all we need to know, just as we know that the killing, while it may have been cold-blooded murder, is a justifiable homicide all the same.
There’s more of that subtextual nuance throughout, from the perversely inspiring motivations of hitchhiking hustler J.D. (Brad Pitt, in the sex-on-a-stick performance that launched him on his trajectory to stardom), who takes advantage of Thelma’s gullibility to rob the heroines even as he teaches her the tactics that will soon launch them on their fateful ride-or-die fugitive adventure; to the self-serving “chivalry” of Louise’s erstwhile boyfriend (Michael Madsen) as he casts himself as the “martyr” in letting her go. And yes, even to the benignly sublimated patriarchal programming that drives police investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel in an uncharacteristically empathetic role) to act as the would-be savior of these two “fallen” women, though they want no part of his well-meaning attempts to “rescue” them from the consequences of their choices. And when the two fugitives terrorize a piggish trucker (Marco St. John) before blowing up his big-rig tanker, nobody says – or needs to say – why it feels to them like the right thing to do; it simply IS the right thing, and we, as the audience, know it. What we have seen up to that point has placed us firmly on Thelma and Louise’s side already, and we’re as ready to watch the puerile patriarchy burn as they are.
None of this is spoken aloud, nor is it even alluded to, but it comes through, nonetheless. Chalk it up, if you like, to the power of cinema, especially in the hands of a versatile, stylish, and seasoned director like Ridley Scott, to communicate what is inherently beyond the power of words.
Thelma and Louise may not be “a couple,” but we can’t help but notice as their clothing evolves from frilly-femme to “butch” utilitarianism along the way, or how their connection to the men in their lives easily dissolves without fanfare. And by the time we reach the movie’s thrilling denouement, when all they have left is their commitment to simply stand up against all the things that have kept them feeling incomplete, unfulfilled, and unacceptable, it’s an achingly familiar feeling for any queer viewer who has experienced the same.
We all know what happens, so it’s no spoiler to say that, when they drive off into oblivion in the Grand Canyon, they choose freedom over life itself – and when they head over that cliff, fully embracing their fate as a feminist iteration of the Bonnie and Clyde brand of “noble” outlaws, they seal their fate with a kiss.
At that point, no explanation is needed. Their love for each other transcends anything they’ve felt with the inadequate men in their lives; and in that final freeze-frame moment, when they drive off the cliff and sail into oblivion, we like to think that their car – like Danny Zuko’s at the end of “Grease” – simply flies away into the bliss of an endless summer, and you can’t get any queerer than that.
Out & About
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
In-person gathering to be held at Tom’s Watch Bar
Modern Military Association of America will host “Pride in Service: An LGBTQ+ Military Happy Hour” on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. at Tom’s Watch Bar.
This in-person gathering is the perfect chance to connect, share stories, and celebrate the diversity within the military community. Come relax, meet fellow LGBTQ+ service members and allies, and enjoy a fun, supportive atmosphere. Don’t miss out on an evening full of pride, camaraderie, and good vibes. Visit Eventbrite for more details.
Dolly Parton biography puts her hardships into context
‘Thelma and Louise’ remains landmark of unspoken queer rebellion
Comings & Goings
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
Calendar: September 11-17
Nominate your favorites for the Blade’s 25th annual Best Of LGBTQ DC Awards
PHOTOS: SUNFESTIVAL
Gloria Steinem’s life of substance and consequence
How Dolly became a folk saint for Appalachian queers
