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Loading ...Maine House approves gay marriage
05.05.2009 2:11pm EDT
(Augusta, Maine) With a vote of 89-58, the Maine House on Tuesday gave initial approval to legislation allowing same-sex marriage.
The vote spent three hours in impassioned debate on the bill.It received initial passage in the state Senate on April 30.
The House version and that of the Senate now must be unified and undergo a final vote before going to the desk of Gov. John Baldacci.
Whether the governor will sign it is anybody’s guess at this point. Baldacci has said he has not made up his mind on gay marriage.
Same-sex marriage advocates have delivered more than 10,000 postcards asking him to support the legislation.
The legislation would repeal Maine’s 12-year old so-called Defense of Marriage law which bars same-sex marriage and make marriage gender-neutral. It also states that churches would not be compelled to conduct same-sex weddings if it would be inconsistent with their doctrine.
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.
The New Hampshire House will vote on a similar bill Wednesday. It already has passed the Senate but Gov John Lynch who has said he believes the current civil union law works fine has not said if he would veto the bill.
Same-sex marriage already is legal in three New England states – Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont
Elsewhere, same-sex marriage is legal in Iowa. New York Gov David Paterson (D) has unveiled legislation to allow same-sex couples to marry in the Empire State and in California, the Supreme Court is expected to rule this spring on the legality of Prop 8 the voter approved measure banning gay marriage in that state.
JJ & Jason,
Thanks for posting the contact information for the governors of Maine and New Hampshire. I E-Mailed both of them to express my support for gay marriage in those two states. I strongly urge others to do the same.
Good news.
We need to be realistic about this issue. The fact is that in ten years same-same marriage will be recognized throughout the USA.
There is presently a debate unfolding on this matter in the Roman Catholic Church.
To quote Beth Griffin in today’s (May 5th) Catholic News Services: ‘Legislation in a democracy generally mirrors public consensus, but individuals who disagree with a law on moral grounds should be allowed to claim an exemption to it, when moral precepts collide with public policy.’
Right. Individuals indeed.
It is not individuals who disagree with public consensus, it is religious institutions hiding behind misguided individuals with visions of the bluebird of paradise flying over their grocery carts and lowering the price tags on all their meat and potatoes, like in the multiplication of the fishes and the loaves of bread in somebody’s version of the life and activities of Jesus.
These misinformed individuals are talking about the same moral precepts that turned countless of thousands of ’sodomites’ over to the mob instead of wasting the precious time of the early and medieval judiciary systems.
The mob entertained itself for centuries by torturing, persecuting and burning ’sodomites’.
Does anybody care about moral precepts like that, those that completely ignore the teachings of Jesus Christ to love one another?
Furthermore, when religious institutions will have the virtue of courage to which they so easily give lip service, that will be the day when they speak publicly as religious institutions and start to reform their accounting systems in terms of the taxes they will have to pay when they interfere with the public consensus in the greatest democracy on the face of this little blue planet which should tend to more serious issues, e,g, the ecological crisis.
As for the Main Marriage Alliance, when are these people going to face the fact that 50% of heterosexual marriages end up in divorce? And that same-sex marriage is ‘just love’ expressed in another way, a way that God intended since God created LGBT persons in the first place?
Cheeze!!!
I never really thought of New England as being pro-gay,I mean I thought Cali,Nevada,and Florida would be first,in the state gay marriage approval line.I expect that state by state will topple in favour of gay marriage,just which ones will keep me guessing.