After California, New England Becomes Epicenter of Gay Marriage
Published November 20, 2008 @ 07:57AM PT
As of today, the only two states in the U.S. that recognize same-sex marriage are New England States - Massachusetts and Connecticut. If Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) have their way, the other four New England states - Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont - will soon be added to the list.
Earlier this week, on the five-year anniversary of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, GLAD announced in a campaign dubbed "6x12" that they will be doubling their efforts to push for marriage equality throughout New England. By 2012, GLAD says, they would like all six New England states to recognize gay marriage.
Each of the four remaining states has a different political landscape on the issue of gay marriage, but GLAD indicates that progress has been made on the issue of marriage over the past few years. Vermont and New Hampshire, for example, recognize civil unions, while activists in Maine were successful in getting over 30,000 voters to sign postcards on Election Day saying they support gay marriage. Even Rhode Island has been active on the front, with organizers hosting large demonstrations for marriage equality in the wake of California's passage of Proposition 8.
Vermont, it seems, is emerging as the next potential victory for gay marriage supporters.
A majority of Vermont residents support changing civil unions to gay marriage, and State Sen. John Campbell, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced this week that he will be sponsoring a bill in support of same-sex marriage at the beginning of the 2009 legislative session. And Beth Robinson, the attorney that argued the successful litigation to make Vermont the first state to recognize civil unions eight years ago said in no uncertain terms "This will be the year," for gay marriage in Vermont. And earlier this year, an independent advisory group called the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection issued a report that said full equality would more directly be achieved in Vermont if the state recognized gay marriage, not just civil unions.
While California's decision on gay marriage remains up in the air with yesterday's decision by the CA Supreme Court to hear arguments on Proposition 8, New England may be the battleground yet again on the issue of gay marriage.
Share this Post
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
EmailRelated Posts
-
Lincoln Chafee: Gay Marriage is a Question of Fairness
-
Barack Obama: America's First Gay President
-
Gay Marriage Seems to be Helping Straight Marriage
Comments (1)
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
-
Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.
Featured Gay Rights Actions
-
-
Help Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act!
12552 People
-
Help Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act!
-
It all began in Vermont, when Dr. Dean was governor. We had won civil marriage in Vermont, and Governor Dean was worried.
He wanted to be the first physician to be elected president. He knew that " gay marriage " would be a non sequitur.
Same-sex marriage is better. It implies that my marriage licence is the same as the person before and after me in numerical order of issuance. This is true....opposite-sex couples precede and succeed our issued licence.
Dr. Dean and his neolibs came up the term "civil union" -a throwback to " separate but (un)equal " that gave blacks second class status for nearly a century. It is then that the neolib response to civil marriage equality was created. So fearful that they would lose their state legislative seats, Vermont's state representatives and senators made the VT statute inferior even to the state prerogatives given marriage.
Then, years later, and despite the machinations of two other presidential hopefuls, Democrat John Kerry of MA, in 2004 and then Republican Mitt Romney last year, we had individuals - the latter touting a downgrade to civil union and the latter wanting to return "buggery" to a criminal statute. This is the warmup for California later......a Roman Catholic and a Mormon nationwide politician both working against LGBT rights.
Enter Joe Lieberman and you get CT with civil unions -with a few more perks to appease the many. Gentrified activists are happy, but gratefully, after years of struggle, civil marriage in CT was the silver lining to the CA dark cloud that descended on election day.
NJ still has that civil union statute, but I hope that it will change as well. The Democratic neolibs in NY will delay the inevitable...Freedom to Marry.org - an organization that we support - who do not compromise like HRC - agrees with GLAD....
SIX IN TWELVE........SIX NEW ENGLAND STATES BY 2012.
At 62, my lifespan has given me the ability to see my spouse's Canada give full marriage to all persons regardless of orientation, and I may live to see civil marriage in many US states, but am saddened to think that I will not live to see the day when the US joins the rest of the major nations in providing nationwide equity.
The US was the last to provide women's suffrage....the last to emancipate slaves.....the last to provide blacks with full human rights......the nation that still undermines its indigenous population......and a nation who still oppresses its minorities.
Posted by A B on 12/05/2008 @ 06:00PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.