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The flap started when local organizers approached a regional Tim Hortons executive and asked whether the company would sponsor "Rhode Island's First Annual Celebrate Marriage and Family Day!" on Sunday, Aug. 16, at Warwick's Aldrich Mansion. Tim Hortons agreed to donate coffee and won itself a mention on the invitation.
Put together by the group known as the National Organization for Marriage, the outdoor rally includes a nuptial-vows renewal ceremony -- for heterosexual couples only -- Christian music and a barbecue.
"Marriage between a man and a woman has been the naturally ordered basis of all human societies and it remains the ideal place to raise children, establish stable communities and thereby best ensure healthy productive generations to come," Rhode Island NOM director Christopher Plante said in announcing the celebration.
It wasn't long before word of the Tim Hortons sponsorship made its way onto several left-leaning blogs, hitting Twitter feeds and Internet sites in the United States and Canada. Within a matter of days, the mainstream Canadian news media got wind of the controversy involving one of the country's most popular chains.
Canada legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2005.
Inundated with criticism, Tim Hortons pulled its sponsorship Monday, announcing on its home page that company does not sponsor events "representing religious groups, political affiliates or lobby groups."
"It has come to our attention that the Rhode Island event organizer and purpose of the event fall outside of our sponsorship guidelines," the statement read. "As such, Tim Hortons cannot provide support at the event."
Tim Hortons spokesman David Morelli said the company had no further comment Tuesday.
Kathy Kushnir, executive director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, a pro-gay marriage group, said that organization was pleased to see Tim Hortons' change of heart. "It's clear that NOM's agenda and its mission is to deny Rhode Islanders basic civil rights, and that's just not OK," she said.
NOM director Plante, meanwhile, said he was shocked at how the uproar had swelled into a major news story. On Monday alone, he fielded almost two dozen Canadian news media calls, he said.
"I am saddened that a vocal outcry by a tiny Internet group has forced the hand of an international organization to back away from a community event that was open to the public," Plante said. He added, "if I were on the State House steps, I would have absolutely no problem with this, but I'm on private property and we've paid for this."
Plante declined to say who will pay for the Aldrich Mansion event. The property is owned by the Diocese of Providence, which is listed as a sponsor.
Also on the list of sponsors: Blount Fine Foods, Michael David Photography, Celldrifter, Northmark Solutions Group and Blish & Cavanagh, a law firm that handles some First Amendment cases for The Providence Journal.
To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Providence Journal, R.I. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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