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.

OBAMA NAMES LESBIAN TO ENVIRONMENTAL TEAM

President-elect Barack Obama is holding true to his word. Yesterday, he named lesbian Nancy Sutley head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Sutley, 46, becomes the first prominent member of the LGBT community to earn a senior role in the Democrat’s new administration.

According to 365gay.com, Nancy was a special assistant to EPA administrator Carol Browner and then served, until 2005, as deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations at the California Environmental Protection Agency and as energy adviser to former Governor Gray Davis. She is currently a Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles for Energy and Environment and a board member for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

“President-elect Obama’s nomination of Nancy Sutley is another step toward full equality for gay Americans,” Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, said in a statement.

“It sends a signal to young people that they can participate in their government at its highest levels, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity.”

Other members of Obama's Environmental and Energy team are Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary, former head of New Jersey’s environmental department, Lisa Jackson, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and former head of the EPA under Clinton, Carol Browner, as head of a White House council on energy and climate. Browner also works closely with and is a personal confidante of former Vice President Al Gore.

In addition, Obama announced that he will nominate Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado to run the Interior Department.

These announcements clearly show that Obama is serious about the environment and they mark a stark departure from the failed and underhanded policies of the Bush administration.

With this team, Obama is demonstrating a far more aggressive approach in addressing global warming and in supporting much needed research into alternative energy sources.

“America must develop new forms of energy and new ways of using it,” he said.

It finally looks like America is, once again, going to work with the other coutries of the world instead of working against them.

GAY MARRIAGE STRUGGLE MARCHS ON

Chapel Hill NC Votes For Gay Marriage Rights...
According to Qnotes Online, less than a week after the town council of Carrboro voted to support marriage equality for same-sex couples, the Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously approved a similar resolution.

Tom Greene, a teacher at Chapel Hill High School who moved to North Carolina with his partner, submitted the resolution to the Town Council. Openly gay Councilman Mark Kleinschmidt urged the council to immediately endorse it instead of waiting for advice from counsel. They did.

The vote affirms the town’s long-standing vision for acceptance and equality. In part, the resolution asked the city to “endorse and support the rights of same-sex couples to share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and commitments of civil marriage.”

The resolutions from Chapel Hill and Carrboro will be forwarded to state and federal legislators.

Chapel Hill, which is located near Durham and the state capital of Raleigh, is home to the University of North Carolina.



New Jersey Commission Backs Gay Marriage Rights...
The New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission unanimously recommended that state legislators allow gays and lesbians to marry.

The commission, mandated to evaluate the state's two-year-old civil unions law, determined that full marriage recognition was superior.

"This commission finds that the separate categorization established by the Civil Union Act invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children."

AP reported that the commission was made up of LGBT leaders, government officials, a Republican and two clergy members. The commission found that in addition to being unequal, the rights afforded same-sex couples under civil unions aren't always well understood. Citing just one example, the commission documented cases in which people in civil unions had been prevented from visiting their partners in the hospital.

According to an article in The Advocate, Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality and the vice chairman of the commission, told the New Jersey Star-Ledger, "The report is a sweeping indictment of the failure of the civil union law and asks Governor Corzine and the legislature: Do you want equality or not? If so, there is only one way to go."

Governor Corzine said that he wouldn't comment until he had reviewed the report. However, the Governor has said in the past that he would sign a bill allowing gay marriage.

If this happens, New Jersey could become the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by passing a law on their own rather than by a forced court ruling.