This wedding WILL happen and when it does, I intend to be right there to celebrate my friends' long awaited happy day and shed joyous tears...
~Louise~
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Dawn, Laura, and the very mighty Quinn The Min-PinPostponed
It's official: our wedding has been postponed.
We had planned to be married September 19, three days after the law went into effect that would allow us to get married, but now opponents of our civil rights have submitted something like 100,000 signatures, nearly twice the required amount, to force a state-wide public vote on whether we can get married. Here's the link to the AP story.
The courts will now issue an injunction preventing the law from going into effect until after the November 3 vote is cast and counted. That way the law does not go into effect, a bunch of us get married, and then if it get overturned, it would leave those couples married already in some kind of legal limbo, not unlike what happened in California in the wake of Prop. 8.
No, the vote is not just about whether Dawn and Laura can get married, but about whether to let stand a law that the legislature passed saying that people of the same sex can have access to a civil marriage if we so desire.
More below the fold.
Conservative churches went bananas on this when it passed, sssed, shouting that the world would stop spinning and civilization as we know it would crumble.
What exactly would happen to their marriages if we get hitched, I am not sure. But they're pretty convinced that it would destroy the whole institution. I'm willing to venture that any institution Brittany Spears can enter while drunk at 3 a.m. in Las Vegas in front of an Elvis impersonator is not something likely to suffer much damage if Laura and I speak those same words. Let's not even address what conservative Republican politicians have done to the institution of marriage in recent years, and apparently in the name of "traditional family values" they are so eager to uphold.
So what do we do now? We fight like hell, that's what. We organize, and identify voters and talk to people. We attend public events wearing buttons that say "ask me why marriage equality matters" and "Vote No On 1" and we raise money, buy ads and do all of the campaign stuff we know how to do.
We ask for money. Like now. I'm asking you, my blog readers, to make a donation to help win this fight. The Catholic Diocese has pledged $2 MILLION. We're up against some pretty tough opponents. Your donation now at the No On 1 - Protect Maine Equality site will help us protect the law our legislature passed and governor signed.
We're on the side of justice here. History is bending in our direction, and this is our chance to march on Selma, as it were. In 50 years when historians look back on this, what will we tell the young people of the day? What do we want to say of our role in this historic battle? The nation, indeed the world, is watching Maine. How we handle this is going to be scrutinized and parsed and criticized from all directions.
The best I can do is to take the next step, to do the next right thing. Which for today means going out to the memorial service of a UU and AA friend, a supporter of my humanity and an advocate for justice and peace, and wear my buttons and talk to people if they ask what they're about. Then we'll go to the art auction for the bra project and wear buttons there too. I'll take some pictures and share them here if they're any good.
And we talk and educate and raise money and keep at it. We're down to 94 days before the election is OVER. That means we have less than 100 days before the whole state gets to vote on whether we get married.
To my married readers - how many people did YOU have to ask for permission to get married? We have to ask the whole State of Maine.
This Spring, Amsterdam sent out a different sort of emissary. Not emissaries of corporate greed, but emissaries of love seeking to celebrate the freedom of marriage equality with their New Yorker cousins. Five LGBT bi-national Dutch-American couples followed the emissaries back to the canals of Amsterdam to wed there on August 1, 2009, Gay Pride ride day.
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| Picture caption: "Dutch-born Stephan Hengst, right, puts a ring on the finger of his husband Patrick Decker, who was born in U.S., after being married by Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen, center. Cohen married five American-Dutch gay couples on Saturday. All five couples had at least one partner from New York, where a battle over the legalization of gay marriage rages on." |
The mayor of Amsterdam married five American-Dutch gay couples on Saturday in an implicit criticism of the lack of same-sex marriage in many U.S. states.The event was organized by Mayor Cohen himself, to increase awareness of marriage (in)equality in New York during the shared Amsterdam-New York Hudson River quadricentennial.Tens of thousands of spectators cheered as Mayor Job Cohen performed the ceremony on a cruise around the city's canals to celebrate the high point of the city's gay pride festival. Eight years ago Cohen presided over the first legal Dutch gay marriage.
All five couples had at least one partner from New York, where a battle over the legalization of gay marriage rages on.
"For me it's a message to New York, the most liberal state, the most hip state, to get with it," said Ira Siff, an opera professional from New York who was about to marry his partner, opera singer Hans Heijnis.
Of course in this day and age, marriage between two people of the same sex or gender isn't just a matter of love, like it or not it's a matter of politics. The Dutch parliamentarian Boris Dittrich, who in 1994 introduced the Netherlands' first gay marriage bill and now is an advocacy director at New York's Human Rights Watch, was on hand for the festivities and kept the light of reality shining. "We want to show to the American public that gay couples cannot get immigration, cannot get equal rights like heterosexual couples can" Dittrich said. Uniteing American Families Act, anyone?
Although these newleyweds' civil marriages won't be recognized by the US federal government or most state governments, they will be recognized by New York state thanks to Governor David Patterson's executive order of May 14, 2008. Marriage equality legislation already passed in the New York Assembly this May 89-52, but is stalled in the < a href="http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11357/breaking-ny-daily-news-reports-two-dems-to-caucus-with-gop-turning-over-control-of-senate">Chamber of Chaos Senate.
"We are hoping our efforts and our visibility will change some people's minds about how important marriage equality is in New York" said Stephan Hengst (pictured above). Hengst is communications director at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. A recurring Siena Research Institute poll shows that about 50% of New Yorkers want the NY Senate to pass the marriage equality bill.
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Related:
* Immigration Equality: At last, a real chance for reform that includes same-sex couples
* NY: Gillibrand and Schumer send letter to lawmakers urging passage of marriage equality bill
A FEISTY raccoon has bitten off a pervert's PENIS as he was trying to rape the animal.
Alexander Kirilov, 44, was on a drunken weekend with pals when he leapt on the terrified - but toothy - fur ball.
"When I saw the raccoon I thought I'd have some fun," he told stunned casualty surgeons in Moscow.
Now Russian plastic surgeons are trying to restore his mangled manhood.
And apparently, foreplay stroking a raccoon is even more lethal.
A DAD of two has died after being bitten by a rabid raccoon he tried to stroke at a barbecue.
Vladimir Turskov, 50, was rushed to hospital after the animal sank its teeth into his arm.
Doctors in Moscow tried to save him, but the virus spread to his central nervous system and shut down all his vital organs.
Hmm. Wonder what the results would have been if either of these gentlemen had tried playing "Muskrat Love" first?
Maybe we should ask animal love expert and GOP GA gubernatorial candidate Neil Horsley his views...
www.GayTalkRadio.org
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