Today, the New Hampshire state senate voted 13-11 to enact gay marriage; previously the state house had voted in favor of gay marriage. The bill goes into conference to resolve minor differences between the versions passed by each house; presumably each house will then approve the final bill and send the legislation to the Democratic governor, who, despite a prior public stance against gay marriage in preference to civil unions (which he signed into law a few years ago), has kept quite about this bill and may sign it or at least let it pass into law without his signature. A recent poll may fortify the governor's courage: 55 percent of the citizens of New Hampshire support gay marriage; only 39% oppose it. I suspect that few people among the 39% vote for Democrats, so maybe the governor will join what is clearly the winning side without quivering and quaking and wetting himself and fearing for his career.
On the absurd side of the issue, Carrie Prajean, Miss California, has joined the National Organization for Marriage, the laughable group which recently presented that silly gay-storm-a-comin' anti-gay marriage ad that was so widely ridiculed and parodied. She will cut an ad relating her recent hair-pulling tussle with Perez Hilton. Get ready for a snow job turning a cat fight into a tale of persecution and saintly courage. And get ready for some glorious parodies and a lot of laughter aimed at this ditz-of-the-week. NOM and the religious right haven't done themselves much good in New Hampshire or any where else. They just don't get the zeitgeist now (by the way, Carrie, that's German for "spirit of the times"). The tide has turned; Americans are accepting gay marriage. According to the New York Times, even fossilized Republican pols are now beginning to fear that they've signed onto a loser issue that at present may exercise folk in eastern Oklahoma and certain bloggers in Texas but in future will bore everybody to death and render the party even more pointless than it already is. Read about the growing unease among reactionaries here: Future dim for Republican dimwits.
And that's the real news here: opinion has changed. Proposition 8, although a technical victory for the anti-gay bigots, curdled public opinion. There was something genuinely indecent about stealing rights from people--on the same night that Americans celebrated a victory over racism by electing a black president. The enormous Vermont victory was another threshold. Hardly eight years after enacting a court-ordered civil unions law that set Vermonters at each other's throats, the same legislature enacts gay marriage and nobody emits a peep of protest. Can any Vermonter remember what all the fuss was about to begin with? Nope.
The only people pushing the anti-gay marriage line are the scam artists on the right who can still get a few old ladies in Topeka to send in a chunk of their monthly Social Security check to finance the phony war to save marriage (and in reality fund the rich lifestyles of the scammers). These parasites care only about making money. For normal people, this issue, once as explosive as nitroglycerin, is yesterday's news and downright dull. Gay marriage is happening; the argument is over; move on.
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