The Fight For Marriage Equality Continues This Wednesday At The State House (NH)

[ccharles000]

It wasn't easy, but New Hampshire became the most recent state to adopt marriage equality last Spring. There are just five states -- New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and Iowa -- where our gay and lesbian citizens have the right to be married, just like everyone else. At one point there were seven, but as disgusting as it is once the right was extended, discrimination was reestablished in California and Maine.

House Bill 436 was approved last year in large part to the advocacy and work of those reading BlueHampshire.com, who went out of their way to contact Legislators on each of the crucial votes. All those votes were close, and E-Mails and telephone calls had an impact.

We have won to this point by remaining positive. We have won by telling our stories and showing our faces. We have won by asking people the simple question: Just why should we discriminate?

Some people would like to revisit discrimination in New Hampshire. Much time has been spent in recent months in the effort to turn back the clock here to the discrimination of yesteryear. But The New Hampshire Way is not to take rights away from our neighbors and friends, and I expect that any such effort will fail -- either now in Concord, or at the March Town Meetings, or next November, or next January. But our own efforts to defend our rights have to continue.

http://www.bluehampshire.com/diary/9336/the-fight-for-marriage-equality-continues-this-wednesday-at-the-state-house

[Tesha]

1. Marriage Equality is almost certainly safe for this year.

The House Judiciary Committee voted that both the repeal of
the Equal Marriage law and the proposed constitutional amendment
barring gay marriage were "inexpedient to legislate". That is,
they recommended to the full House that both proposals be
killed.

That recommendation is likely to be upheld this year and
both measures will be killed for this year.

But *NEXT YEAR*, the New Hampshire government is quite
likely to be back in Republican hands. Then there certainly
will be cause to worry, and I'm certainly worrying. But maybe
by then, enough people will know enough happily-married
gay couples that most folks won't have the stomach to take
away anyone's rights. Maybe...

Tesha