Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Vermont legislature overrides governor veto

Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage _ and the first to do so with a legislature's vote The Huffington Post reports:

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It's now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.


h/t to Episcopal Cafe

6 comments:

Brother David said...

¡Felicidades al Estado de Vermont y su gente!

Pure legislature, the elected representatives of the people, not an activist judge in sight!

Anonymous said...

Awesome news from Vermont.

Of course CA's legislature atempted this, but could not override Ah-nuld's veto.

FOR SHAME CALIFORNIA

IT

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

It is going in the right direction ;=)

JCF said...

Sends happy shout-outs to Caminante, et all in the Green Mountain State! :-)

Courage, IT: drip, drip, drip . . . and justice rolls like a mighty flood!

RudigerVT said...

See posting on next thread. And yeah, it's been pretty good in the Green Mountain State (other than the fact that it's snowing again).

LPR

RudigerVT said...

Meanwhile, in the midst of celebrations in northern New England, the most loyal of the loyal opposition isn't real happy.

Steve Cable of Rutland, a founder of the group Vermont Renewal, said same-sex marriage opponents across the state are "blood shooting out of their eyes mad" about the veto override vote.

Cable said he has already attended two organizational meetings this afternoon to discuss follow-up steps, but he said it is too early to discuss what those might look like.

"This isn't about moving on," Cable said. "This is about getting even."


Uh, yeah, Steve. We've been watching you seethe for going on a decade. During the civil-unions debate, he held these very weird public events where the public literally could not talk. One was in a state office building, apparently secured for use by a sympathetic state representative. Goonishly large law-enforcement officers were in attendance. It was a nerve wracking combination of comedic farce and chilling proto-fascist.

Right now, though, I think (THINK) that Cable's opposition has largely cooked down to rather few. Sad fact: the vast majority of the motivated are driven by their faith.

But this (again) also picks up a sort of pseudo-populist strain, the long-standing beef over the effects of people who are (like me) "from away," (the classic locution) or "flatlanders" (the more recent moniker).

It's too soon to tell, though, what, exactly, will happen. It won't be pretty, but hopefully it also won't be as pervasive as the chilling "Take Back Vermont" and "Remember in November" signs from before.

LPR