HEY VERMONT! WELCOME TO THE PARTY!

[rmd]

vermont legislature overrode the veto. so now there are *four* states with marriage equality.

I'm not planning on relocating any time soon, but now there are three other places i could move to if needed without suddenly becoming a second class citizen. (well, three and a half if you count NY, which recognizes same-sex marriages but doesn't perform them.)

Comments

[flabosib.livejournal.com]

I hope you wouldn't feel that you have to move anywhere. I'd hate to have you be more than 15 minutes away (even if we never do see one another).

[diego001.livejournal.com]

Isn't it nice when states order all citizens to gay marry (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30475)?

[sapphira-altair.livejournal.com]

Hooray! Oh, it's nice to get some good news today. :)

[shadowsmark.livejournal.com]

But surely Vermont should get extra credit for being in the vangard with Civil Unions. Even though that seems retro now, it was ground-breaking not so long ago.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Vermont is still the first state to implement gay marriage via its legislature. That was because, when Vermont's Supreme Court first struck down prohibitions against recognizing same-gender relationships, they refused to be "activist judges" and merely informed the state legislature that they were required to come up with some way of dealing.

"Civil unions" was the compromise.

Today, the compromise has been struck down as insufficient.

Some other state can have the honor of having their bill signed by their governor.

[adb-jaeger.livejournal.com]

Some other state can have the honor of having their bill signed by their governor.

In what way, other than ticky-tacky scorekeeping, is that important?

It's either the law or it's not. In Vermont, it is.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Mostly, it's ticky-tacky score-keeping.

But there's still a sizable faction out there which claims that all gay marriage is the work of "activist judges". Those people are full of crap, of course, but by having the legislature pass the law, this argument is cut off.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

More importantly, legislative approval -- by 2/3 -- shows that the popular support is strong enough that a constitutional amendment to thwart it is not going to happen.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

"Shows" to whom? The flatlanders who'd have no problem dumping gigantic amounts of ad money into a cheap-media state?

They tried that seven years ago. Vermonters told the flatlanders to spend more, and voted against them.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard of Take Back Vermont?

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Crotchety old farts. Yeah, they took lots of out-of-state money for their lawn signs. But yes, they did find some xenophobic old yankees to put the signs on their lawns.

They're also a vast minority.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

I'm writing this from the airport at Colorado Springs...which, if you've been paying any attention to the fight for marriage equality, is the home of Focus on the Family (another sterling example of right-wingers appropriating wholesome-sounding terms to create a label for a hate program). The irony is delicious. Back when FotF was newly...um...tumescent, really, is the best word I can come up with, there were a lot more losses than gains in the marriage equality fight (at least if you were keeping a simplistic kind of score. Against the Hawaii suit and Vermont civil unions was DOMA and a barrage of state laws and constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage.

And then came Massachusetts, which I regard as the true breach in the dam. The reaction to Massachusetts was predictably ugly, and so reminiscent of the hate-fueled actions against the African-American civil rights movement that I couldn't help think that many of the originators of these actions were creating a chapter of their lives that they would most likely be ashamed of in the future. I'm now quite sure that that day will come within my lifetime, unless I step in front of a bus first.

While we celebrate this victory, I think it's good to remember that it was mostly not our work that got us there, but the work of countless generations who lived and died without this right (and all the other rights that it indirectly establishes; it is virtually impossible to institute a right to marry and yet deny a class of people the other rights of citizenship, and next to that gain, marriage seems almost trivial). Let's remember their lives and history as we celebrate the future.

[hanseth.livejournal.com]

Maine is next.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I thought Rhode Island also recognised same sex marriages from other states,but didn't perform them. I'm assuming they may well go next