Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

oops...reading the headline and getting ahead of myself, but very close

Yeah, still a touch early but definitely advancing. It's entirely possible that by the end of May the only state in New England without it would be Rhode Island.

Miss California to campaign against gay marriage.

From the comments section:

"A woman with died hair and fake boobs lecturing on what is natural is like unlicensed, tax dodging, food stamp collecting plumber talking about personal responsibility."

McCain (Cindy) / Prejean '12

I simply cannot understand why people would be opposed to gay marriage, and it's always the ones who are incessantly paying lip service to "family values."

I'm all for gay marriage, and also for gay divorce.

thanks for taking that bold stand

Carrie Prejean is from Vista, CA, which is a Republican stronghold in northern San Diego County.

I hate that she's my state's representative in the Miss USA Pageant. Hate, hate, hate.

Max is gay for me.

I hate that she's my state's representative in the Miss USA Pageant. Hate, hate, hate.

^I wouldn't lose too much sleep over this.

Yeah, c'mon, it's a beauty pageant ffs, hardly a repair of the most progressive sentiments.

Maine is in.

Yeah Maine! I was born in Vermont and have lived in Maine for nine years. Nice to see both states change via the legislature as opposed to the courts. Can't say it isn't "the will of the people" or any of that BS.

DC city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.

Can't say it isn't "the will of the people" or any of that BS

i would love to believe you on this but i fear that conservative campaigns for referenda are just around the corner

They'll have California's situation as a role model, sadly, but at the same time I think that game-changed things more than the anti-gay marriage folks ever guessed.

Meantime what is interesting about this is that this is the first situation where it was a straight up 'passed the state legislature, signed by the governor' situation without court decisions, overrides or the like, and the governor himself indicated his own change of heart on the matter. New Hampshire could potentially be next.

Another thing of interest too -- granted that it's Maine and not, say, New York (yet) but this is NOT turning into a major news story as yet. The Washington Post is highlighting it but the NY Times and LA Times and etc. barely at all. I almost read that as a sign that this is becoming more of a 'well yeah, duh' issue in some corners, obv. not all.

more likely it's "lol Maine, who cares"

It sometimes seems like newsmedia doesn't actually care about anything unless it happens in New York/California/DC/Chicago.

AUGUSTA, Maine - Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a gay marriage bill passed just hours before by the Maine Legislature.

Baldacci made his announcement within an hour of the Maine Senate giving its final approval to LD 1020. The Senate voted 21-13 in favor of the measure after a short debate.

"In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions," Baldacci said in a written statement. "I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/105356.html

A little more from the NYT now:

Gov. John Baldacci of Maine on Wednesday signed the same-sex marriage bill passed by the State Legislature, saying he had reversed his position on such marriages after deciding it was a matter of equal protection under the state’s Constitution.

“It’s not the way I was raised and it’s not the way that I am,” the governor said in a telephone interview. “But at the same time I have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution. That’s my job, and you can’t allow discrimination to stand when it’s raised to your level.”

It further discusses the referenda option as elmo has noted, so we'll see how this plays out.

Can't say it isn't "the will of the people" or any of that BS

i would love to believe you on this but i fear that conservative campaigns for referenda are just around the corner

Oh, the nutters have been talking about a referendum before this passed, so I'm sure it will be on the ballot this fall. Baldacci hinted at that in his statement as well.

It was nice of him to point out this doesn't affect religions at all, which people don't point out often enough.

i would love to believe you on this but i fear that conservative campaigns for referenda are just around the corner

Battles will likely still be lost here and there (or maybe even never attempted at a state-by-state level in some states), but the war definitely feels like it's easily winnable now.

To further bolster my "lol Maine, who cares" hypothesis, here is the lead story on CNN.com, over coverage of the signing of this bill:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/06/florida.chinese.drywall.family/index.html

...Really? This is the most important story you have today?

haha i love how often the word "chinese" is used in that article

gotta make sure we remember that the great drywall scare of '09 was caused by the yellow menace

i'm going to just look at that URL and make up my own story involving florida, chinese food, and drywall

meanwhile, the RI House just passed legislation prohibiting indoor prostitution (not just outdoor solicitation, as was previously the case) in a regressive response to (i'm guessing) the craigslist killer; i know that doesn't have anything to do gay marriage per se but taking that development as a social barometer, my hopes for RI gay marriage are pretty diminished

Theoretically that would still allow for indoor/outdoor gloryholes.

well--fewer prostitutes indoors means fewer deaths from the menace of chinee drywall

you can't get married through a gloryhole, ned.

lol ned

Building a bit on what I noted earlier in this almost starting to seem normal -- I had wondered if/when Sullivan would post anything about this, and he did but only after about a couple of hours (which for him and this issue is the equivalent of an eon), and briefly. I'm not surprised to see this as a follow-up with this introduction:

I'm sitting here, after renting a tux and grabbing a sandwich at Starbucks, and realize I just posted a brief note on the fifth state in the US to grant marriage equality. As if this were now routine. As if it were no big deal. As if what was only recently a pipe-dream hasn't become a reality.

Pity about the Starbucks sandwiches though.

I love their toffee bars!

sweet

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/13/new.york.same.sex.marriage/index.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2218774/

makes sense to me, except for california?

the religious right has never been a force in New England (I dunno about Iowa).

no on 8 coalition just totally fucked it up/shot themselves in the foot didn't they. lol california

yeah they didn't count on the strength of out-of-state organizers (thx Utah! fucking Mormons)

beware the west, where people are still crazy and make $$$ from it

California gays should pour a bunch of money into fucking with Utah's ridiculous liquor laws and/or prosecuting polygamists

lol :/

http://www.youtube.com/v/haVqcPfeqKI

the religious right has never been a force in New England

evangelicals, no. catholics, a little bit (which goes towards explaining RI slow moving on this issue)

this is sort of amazing. i can't possibly summarize his argument because i'm not entirely sure what it is, but he says some sort of astounding stuff along the way:

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined. Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon. This may seem a grim thing for the young woman--if you think of how the teenaged Natalie Wood was not permitted to go too far with Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world. No wonder that weddings tend to be regarded as religious ceremonies in almost every culture: They celebrate the completion of a difficult task for the community as a whole.
This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)--these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.

so, basically ... because gay marriage isn't concerned with protecting female virginity, if we make it legal ... all women will become child-prostitutes?

anyway, there's much, much more in there. and it is published in a real actual magazine!

Anything to keep them happy.

I think the California decision tomorrow will likely not overturn 8 but we'll see.

I like how that argument seemingly assumes that there aren't any gay women.

'sexual access' pretty neatly sums it all up.

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

I mean

I like how that argument seemingly assumes that there aren't any gay women.

among many other bizarre assumptions. it's like he gives kind of a history lesson of all the horrible things that have been involved in traditional marriages (and still are some places, obv). and then says, "well, so, we don't do those kinds of things any more. but if we did, none of them would apply to gay marriage. so ...." and then i just lose whatever thread of argument he's trying to make. but it seems like it's part of the current phase of the anti-marriage brigades (which i would characterize as a rear-guard action, if it didn't make me snicker), where they know they're losing traction and they know it's important not to come across as bigots or zealots, so they have to come up for ever more baroque and impenetrable framings for arguments that of course remain bigoted and zealous at their core. it's kind of entertaining, although obviously it would be more entertaining if actual people's real lives and rights weren't at stake.