It was his donation of $125,000 to anti-gay activists early in 2008 that made it possible for them to pay professional petitioners to gather the required number of signatures to put Prop 8 on the ballot that year. When asked why he made the donation, Manchester was the soul of holier-than-thou piety, saying he was motivated by “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church.”
You can guess what happened about six months later, but here it is anyway:
On Oct. 9, 2008, Manchester ended 43 years, eight months and nine days of marriage to Elizabeth Manchester by moving out of their La Jolla abode. The couple spent the next several months trying to reach a quiet settlement on how best to distribute millions of dollars in cash and other assets. In July, those talks totally broke down, and Doug started playing financial hardball with Elizabeth, allegedly draining the couple’s shared accounts and stealing her mail…
It got really ugly after that — you can read the rest here.
The Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego has been the subject of a boycott since Doug Manchester’s name first appeared on the Prop 8 donor rolls. In July, a Republican self-hating gay group held a meeting there, apparently as a good-will gesture to their oppressors — it’s this same group whose invitation to Ann “John Edwards Is a Faggot” Coulter put her back in the news after a years-long but too-short absence.
Given all that, the California GOP couldn’t have chosen a better site for its 2010 convention, and their top candidate, Meg Whitman, the billionaire who has spent $104 million on her campaign for governor, so far, couldn’t have chosen a better place to make a stand against gay marriage in California:
GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman – trying to tamp down opposition from conservatives who say she is undermining them – criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Friday for not defending California’s same sex-marriage ban, now before a federal appeals court…
“I think the governor of California and the attorney general today have to defend the Constitution and have to enable the judicial process to go along … and an appeal to go through,” Whitman said. “So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court.”
Whitman was referring to District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision earlier this month that struck down Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, as unconstitutional. It is being appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where neither Schwarzenegger, the GOP governor, nor Brown, Whitman’s Democratic rival for governor, is defending it. In an unusual circumstance, the organization that sponsored Prop. 8 is defending it in court.
This is obviously an attempt by Whitman to throw some red meat to her homophobic base — to prove her bona fides as a hater who won’t betray them like Gov. Schwarzenegger did (sort of — he supports gay marriage now but vetoed two bills legalizing gay marriage that were passed by both house of the legislature — even though two polls last month found that 51 percent of Californians support gay marriage now.
Whitman surprised her former colleagues in the Silicon Valley — not to mention her gay longtime executive assistant — when she came out against gay marriage in her first interview after she’d announced she was running for governor. (She prefers separate but unequal civil unions.)
Whitman’s explanation that she opposed gay marriage because her of “personal conscience and my faith” drew chuckles when it was revealed that she was not a Mormon or a Catholic but a Presbyterian.
Obviously Whitman doesn’t understand the Constitution, because if she did, she would understand that Prop 8 is illegal under the 14th Amendment. I get so tired of hearing politicians and members of the public talk about the Constitution, a document that the majority of them have not read, or they’ve read but don’t understand. Better yet, I’d say that being elected/getting their preferred candidate elected has nothing to do with the Constitution. For people like these, the Constitution is used as a wedge issue to promote their own interests.
What happened to Manchester’s Family Values if he and his wife are divorcing after 43 years? IMHO, he doesn’t seem to take his own words seriously. I guess this only goes so far with Manchester: “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church.” Please keep shining a light on these bigots and hypocrites.
The Republicans are so funny, when the economy is good you say let’s all celebrate “Cinco de Mayo, my brothers” but when the economy is down “it’s all your fault, you damn immigrant”. When most Americans (with Latin America roots) go to the polls this November we will remember that the GOP has gone on a nationwide rant in proposing and passing several anti-immigration legislation (that our US Courts continue to strike down) and have continue to blame the immigrant for the flat economy or worse. We will remember who stands with us and who stands against us, so trying to stop it now is somewhat funny, but go ahead, you will not change our minds. Plus the more radical of the GOP are now attacking our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, in a misguided attempt to garner some much needed votes, they really are fools, and leading the GOP towards obscurity because they are no longer a party of ideas, just of empty suits. Your hate made you do it, in November; you will reap what you have sown. I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would say about todays GOP, he unlike the current GOP was a man of ideas.