A House co-sponsor of Maryland's gay
marriage bill has deleted a tweet in support of the bill, angering
his progressive base.
Delegate Sam Arora, a freshman delegate
from Derwood, won the endorsements of Progressive Maryland, Equality
Maryland and the Washington Post in
part due to his commitment to marriage equality.
“I am a former
law clerk to Attorney General Doug Gansler,” Arora wrote as an
addendum to his questionnaire for Equality Maryland. “I publicly
supported his decision to recognize out-of-state marriage licenses
for same-sex couples and immediately put out a release praising his
findings. For me, it's simply a matter of equal rights under the
law.”
Arora sits on the
House Judiciary Committee that is expected to vote on the measure
Friday.
He
began signaling a change of heart early in the week, telling the
Baltimore Sun that he
would vote for the bill in committee because “This bill deserves an
up-or-down vote, so I'm voting to send it to the floor.”
Then,
on Thursday morning, alarms went off when he tweeted, “Hearing from
constituents, friends. Please keep sending your thoughts
(sam.arora@house.state.md.us).
Thinking and praying hard.”
Bloggers
at AMERICAblog Gay noticed that Arora had also deleted a January
25 tweet in which he boasted about his co-sponsorship of the bill.
“I co-spons'd the
Relig. Freedom & Civil Marriage Prot. Act. It will couple civil
marriage equality & relig. free exercise protections in Md,”
Arora messaged.
The revelation
angered former supporters on Facebook.
“Maybe the only
thing worse than being a bigot is being a hypocritical lying bigot,”
wrote Stephen Clark.
“You have no
integrity,” added Susan Vargo.
David Chamberlain
noted: “If you wanted to support discrimination against gay people,
you should have run as a conservative Republican. Instead, you ran
as a progressive Democrat.”
“By making
campaign promises that you don't intend to keep, for the sole purpose
of raking-in donations from Progressive and LGBT-friendly voters, you
represent the worst in American politics. Enjoy your one term,”
Zach Stewart wrote.