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Loading ...Maine committee endorses gay marriage bill
04.28.2009 4:19pm EDT
(Augusta, Maine) The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted 14-11 Tuesday to bring the equal marriage bill before the full Senate.
Moments before the vote was taken, a woman was removed from the room by State Police after shouting that the bill was immoral. Meanwhile, same-sex marriage advocates delivered more than 10,000 postcards to Gov. John Baldacci asking him to support the legislation. Baldacci has said he has not made up his mind on gay marriage.EqualityMaine and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence called on the governor to endorse the bill and sign it if it passes the legislature. The groups also sent lawmakers copy of a book they prepared that includes interviews with 82 people who tell about the impact on their families of not having a gay marriage law.
The legislation would repeal Maine’s 12-year-old Defense of Marriage law which bars same-sex marriage. It also states that churches cannot be compelled to conduct same-sex weddings if they would be contrary to their doctrine.
Maine’s tourism industry has said legalizing same-sex marriage in the state could save them from disaster as the state’s economy continues to turn sour.
Industry spokespeople pointed to a recent study by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California – Los Angeles that found extending marriage to same-sex couples would boost Maine’s economy by $60 million over three years, which would generate increases in state and local government tax and fee revenues by almost $3.6 million.
The conservative Maine Marriage Alliance has said that if same-sex marriage appears to be on a track to legalization, it would press for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
A vote in the Senate could come as early as next week.
In New Hampshire, a vote on a similar bill is set for an initial vote Wednesday in the state Senate.
Same-sex marriage already is legal in three other New England states – Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont.
“press for a constitutional amendment to dismantle the constitution. And use a simple majority to take away the rights of an equal minority? How out of wack is that? These anti-gay marriage Christians don’t believe in live and let live. They believe is hate, discrimination and controlling everyone else. They are rabid and dangerously misguided. It’s time to expose them for what they are: and what they want is to take everyone elses rights away from them in the name of THEIR GOD, and to destroy the Constitution and Bill Of Rights. It’s called Tyrannical Religious Rule, but just one group.
It is called hatred, which stems from the super-brainwashing the churches have learned to do over eons. Hardly different except in degree of violence then what the Wahabi extremist Muslims did – which gave us 9/11.
And go take a look at the history of the Catholic church, and you’ll probably realize as I now do that there is not a word in our language to describe the horrors that have stemed from their total control freakism.
BTW, a news item I picked up – “sources high in the vatican are calling the Papacy of Benedict a disaster”.
That guy is so out of touch with the real world that he should be confined to a nursing home. He’s telling Africans they shouldn’t use condoms and should depend on abstinence – while 23 million of them are dying of aids. The guy is beyond belief.
Please correct the vote total for the Senate Judiciary Committee. There are only 14 on the committee and 11 voted for the bill. 2 members voted against the bill and 1 voted to send it to voters in November in a referendum.
Maine Senate just passed Marriage Equality bill minutes ago!