BREAKING NEWS...
Maine's House of Representatives just passed legislation that legalizes gay marriage in the State of Maine.

The vote was 89 to 58 in favor of passage. The State Senate approved the measure last week so now the bill goes directly to Governor John Baldacci for his signature.

I'll have more on this in tomorrow's posting.

GEARING UP IN MAINE

In an article posted this morning, 365gay.com reported that public hearings on legislation that would allow gay marriages will begin tomorrow (4/22/09) at the Augusta Civic Center.

Actually, there are three bills dealing with same-sex unions that will be up for discussion. One is to repeal Maine's own 12 year old version of a Defense of Marriage Law which, like the federal DOMA law, bans same-sex marriages outright. Another would make all state laws and statutes gender neutral. Both of these bills are sponsored by Democratic Senator Dennis S. Damon of Trenton.

Although no more than 10 lawmakers are normally allowed to sign on as co-sponsors of a bill, Senator Damon said that 50 others sought to have their names added to the marriage bill. So now the bill has 60 co-sponsors that, according to Damon, represent both Democrats and Republicans and come from Maine’s smallest towns and largest cities.

Senator Damon was elected to the Maine Senate in 2002 and is currently serving his fourth and final term so, of course, passage of these two bills would be a great way for him to end his career.

The third bill up for discussion was filed by Republican Representative Leslie Fossel and it would create a domestic-partner registry but keep the Defense of Marriage Law in place.

According to the article:

Advocates and opponents of same-sex marriage have crisscrossed the state in recent weeks, drumming up support for their prospective sides.

Maine’s tourism industry has said legalizing same-sex marriage in the state could save them from disaster as the state’s economy continues to turn sour.

Industry spokespeople pointed to a recent study by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California Los Angeles, that found extending marriage to same-sex couples would boost Maine’s economy by $60 million over three years, which would generate increases in state and local government tax and fee revenues by almost $3.6 million.

As expected, the very conservative Maine Marriage Alliance has threatened to press for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage outright if it looks like the bill is going to pass. If current trends continue however, the Alliance might find it a lot harder to just simply get the number of signatures needed to put that kind of amendment on the ballot.

Last November the Boston-based LGBT rights group, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), launched the “Six by Twelve” campaign to legalize gay marriage throughout all six New England states by 2012. GLAD mounted the successful legal challenges that lead to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Wouldn't it be great if they succeeded ahead of schedule?

If Maine's bill passes and is signed into law, it would leave only New Hampshire and Rhode Island as the remaining two New England states without equal marriage laws.

Right now, marriage equality legislation has already passed the New Hampshire House and is currently before the Senate.

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.