GAY-MARRIAGE IN MAINE?

It's beginning to look a lot like gay-marriage might become a reality in Maine.

With Connecticut adopting legal gay marriages and the recent unanimous recommendation of a New Jersey commission to dispense with civil unions and legalize gay marriages there, not to mention the very real possibility of New York, it seems that a sizable portion of Maine residents are becoming more comfortable with the idea of gay marriages for their state as well.

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin reported :

It looks like Maine may emerge as the next battleground for same-sex marriage. Equality Maine had 250 volunteers at 86 polling places on election day asking voters to sign postcards supporting same-sex marriage to send to state legislators. Equality Maine’s goal was “only” 10,000 signatures; they collected 33,190. Meanwhile, the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry has been holding press conferences around the state to build support for same-sex marriage.

Of course, the religious right wingnut fanatics have already started to organize to try a Prop 8 style constitutional amendment campaign against this. But Maine isn't California. In Maine, a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature, followed by a majority vote of the people in a referendum is required before any amendments can become legal. With trends tracking the way they are, I don't think that's too likely.

I also believe that our community has learned some very important lessons from the November 4th fiascos in California, Arizona and Florida. Those defeats were probably the best thing to happen to the gay marriage struggle. They jolted and, in turn, energized a whole new activist movement that hasn't been seen in the GLBT community since the early seventies. We're simply not going to let that happen again.