Another State Allows Gay Marriage

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Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com: Maine Becomes Fifth State to Allow Gay Marriage [12:52 p.m. ET]

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and another

The New Hampshire legislature passed a marriage equality act today too. The governor has supported the bill. It can't be stopped it seems.

Joy, Jan

Congrats Maine

Here in Sweden the legal change started to be enacted on 1 May this year. From now the unification between persons are called Marriage regardles of the gender or sex of the two persons. The church of Sweden has not yet accepted this as their AGM will take place this fall and it will be decided there. So for the moment the nmarraige has to be "declared in the mayors ofice or by a priest, but still outside the walls of the Church of Sweden.

Ginnie

GinnieG

It seems likely...

Puddintane's picture

That all of New England will eventually do the same, since New Hampshire has taken up the issue already, making Rhode Island the only holdout in New England, and the California Supreme Court ruling on the legality of the gay marriage ban enacted by the right wing is due sometime in June, so the majority of the West Coast may follow.

The Iowa court's ruling is particularly well-reasoned, and pretty much covers all the bases, explaining exactly what harm is done through such bans -- especially to children affected by differential treatment -- and explicitly rejecting all religious arguments. Based on this, they reason that any limitation on civil rights requires special scrutiny by the courts because of a long history of hatred and discrimination directed against gay and lesbian individuals, so California well be hard-pressed to justify allowing the state constitutional amendment to succeed without similar special scrutiny by the Legislature, so there's some hope that the hateful amendment will be rejected in California, and it would never pass the legislature, which would kill it.

This does, of course, affect the rights of transgendered persons as well, since "gay" marriage variations have been used to prevent transsexuals from marrying the person of their choice, in some cases from marrying at all, in a sort of bigot's Catch 22.

There's a possibility, at least, that the USA as a whole will eventually catch up to the civilised world, although I have to admit that I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers,

Puddin'
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If you're interested in following the California case, the court will post a notice of when it will rule at:

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/#forthcoming.

To sign up for an e-mail notification, go to:

http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/email.cfm?dist=0

and register case # S168047.

You'll have to verify your e-mail address through a click-on link.

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Cheers,

Puddin'

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