After a week-and-a-half of anxiety, the New Hampshire legislature seems back on track to make gay marriage legal. You'll recall that the governor decided to back gay marriage provided that language "protecting" religious denominations was adopted. The Senate quickly voted in favor, but the House vote failed by 3 votes. The bill went to a joint committee; the committee has finally agreed to language that is basically the same as originally proposed; the governor has signed onto the compromise. A vote appears likely on Wednesday. Sometime next week gay marriage will be the law of the land in New Hampshire.
That will leave only one New England state, Rhode Island, without gay marriage. A new poll indicates that fully 60% of Rhode Island citizens approve of gay marriage. The present governor does not; the present Democratic leaders of the legislature do not; so one wonders how long the personal preferences of three elected officials will be allowed to trump the will of the vast majority of the citizens. The Catholic church is very influential in the state, so the fight for equality is likely to be an ugly one. One would think that the Catholic church had lost all moral credibility given a decade of exposure of its rotten, corrupt tolerance of child rape by its priests (the latest horrific chapter of this tale is now being played out in Ireland, and a more appalling tale of officially tolerated brutality against helpless children cannot be imagined by decent people). But the church and its boosters pretend to speak from a moral high ground as they shamelessly lie about gay people and their families, and enough dimwits believe this rot to keep gay marriage a contentious topic.
Read about New Hampshire here
No comments:
Post a Comment