Washington D.C. will now recognize gay marriages from other states thanks to a unanimous 13-0 12-1 vote by the D.C. Council. Marion Barry wanted to redo the vote because he didn’t realize what he was voting on before (wtf?) and changed his yes vote to the sole no vote.
Today the Maine State Senate voted to pass LD 1020, the gay marriage bill in Maine. The bill passed by a narrow 20-15 vote and will now be sent to the House. At the same time, the senate rejected an amendment that would have brought the bill to popular vote in the state. Seems like state legislatures have seen the mess Prop 8 created and want to avoid that train wreck.
Maine recently held a highly attended public hearings to discuss gay marriage.
Maine is racing New Hampshire to become the 5th state to crawl out of the puritanical 50s.
This morning, New Hampshire moved one large step closer to legalizing same-sex marriage. The NH State senate approved HB 436 by a narrow vote of 13-11.
The bill now goes through a procedural vote through the House (where it already passed) because of slight wording changes.
Mr. gay marriage bill will then be sent up to democratic governor John Lynch to sign off on or veto. He has not indicated yet which way he’s going to go though he did make this statement last week:
I still believe the fundamental issue is about providing the same rights and protections to same-sex couples as are available to heterosexual couples,” Lynch said in a statement Wednesday. “This was accomplished through the passage of the civil unions law two years ago. To achieve further real progress, the federal government would need to take action to recognize New Hampshire civil unions.
photo by Marc Nozell
If Lynch does sign off, New Hampshire will become the fifth state to allow same-sex marriage. The bill would also ban heterosexual marriage and make New Hampshire a haven for heathens and a target for earthquakes, lightning, and locusts. That’s the logical progression of events right?
Monday, May 4, 2009
General Meeting – 7:00 PM
Barrio Action Youth & Family Center
4927 Huntington Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90032
Stonewall Young Democrats is organizing a panel discussion of pertinent immigration issues that affect the LGBT community including the Uniting American Families Act and the Dream Act.
Confirmed speakers include:
Ricardo Lara – Communications Director Assembly Member Kevin De Leon
Ana Grande – Community Activist
Fermin Vazquez – Students United (to) Reach Goals (in) Education (S.U.R.G.E)
Ron Buckmire – Board Member, Immigration Equality
Are you a high school or college student in LA or Orange County? Can you write 1,000 words in any order? Then you may qualify for some cash money.
API PFLAG is sponsoring an essay contest for students who will be enrolled in an accredited two or four year college or university in the Fall of 2009. Just write about how same-sex marriage is a fundamental civil right from the perspective of an Asian American and you too, can have free money. Essays can be in English, Korean, or Chinese.
For all the details, check out the API PFLAG blog.
The following letter was written to newspapers throughout the Southern California area on behalf of Stonewall Young Democrats:
On the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, a middle aged man tells a crowd of young gay rights activists what it was like to live in the era of Harvey Milk: “We felt like we were so close to full equality,” he says, “like we could reach out and grab it.”
Yet thirty years later, the passage of Prop.8 reminds us that progress can be slow. For young people who believed that we grew up in an era of seemingly increasing acceptance, Prop. 8 has been a shocking and brutal assault. Prop. 8 invokes more than same-sex marriage; in many ways it is a litmus test for society’s tolerance toward gay people in general.
Take the television commercials that ran during the campaign. Supporters of the initiative threatened that legalized same-sex marriage would somehow endanger children. This insinuation revived the archaic misperception of homosexuality as a learned and shameful behavior. Many people oppose gay marriage because they believe homosexuals choose their lifestyle and society should not reward such behavior. Not only is this belief a fallacy, it is also an affront to our individual liberty.
In the Supreme Court’s original decision to allow same-sex marriage, marriage itself was only part of the ruling. The Court reiterated that gay people are fully entitled to all the rights and responsibilities which every group of society is granted. The Court thus determined that discrimination based on sexual orientation was just as nefarious as discrimination based on race or sex. Yet in passing Prop. 8, for the first time in history, a bare majority overturned a court’s granting of full equality for a minority and enshrined discrimination in our constitution.
While many voters saw this initiative as a matter of opinion – another political question on their long ballots, gay people saw it as a direct attack on their full social inclusion in the nation’s most diverse state. This is why gay people will not settle for second-class terminology, such as civil union or domestic partnership. Yes, it may be easier to accept almost all the same rights under a different name, but the reason for severing the name from the rights is to separate one group of people from another. As history has proven, separate is never equal, and to deny same-sex couples the word marriage is to condone inequality.
On March 5, the state Supreme Court will once again hear arguments regarding the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. The Court must reject Prop. 8 and restore same-sex marriage. Not doing so will set the dangerous precedent that minority rights are forever at the mercy of the beliefs of the majority. That would undermine the entire reason for constitutional rights.
No matter how the Court rules, the battle over same-sex marriage will likely continue. But if the aftermath of Prop. 8 is any indication, gay rights activists are unwilling to relent in their struggle for full equality, no matter how far we must reach out to grab it.
Tom De Simone
Community Vice President, Stonewall Young Democrats