Maine Senate approves marriage equality bill.

[Occam Bandage]

BOSTON (Reuters) - Maine's Senate passed a bill on Thursday that could make the northeastern U.S. state the fifth in the country to allow gay marriage, but the lower chamber and governor have yet to approve it.

The legislation, which will go to a vote in the state House of Representatives next week, seeks to redefine marriage as the legal union of two people rather than between a man and a women. It passed the Senate by a 20-15 margin.

Maine Governor John Baldacci once opposed gay marriage, but said earlier in April he is keeping an open mind on the issue.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE53T8PK20090501

[BlooInBloo]

1. Looks like Maine isn't gonna be the last to join civilization...

Since that's really the only remaining question.

[Occam Bandage]

2. Who'd have thought Prop 8 would have ended up

being one of the absolute best things to ever happen for the marriage-equality movement? It hurt, but that seems to have inspired equal-rights activists to fight aggressively across the country.

[BlooInBloo]

4. There is certainly irony-aplenty there to be appreciated.

[bdamomma]

3. wow it seems to be catching on, good for those states to get with it.

[David__77]

5. So this will go to referendum if passed for sure. Can we win?

Maine has very close votes on relatively lukewarm non-discrimination laws. Are the forces there for this fight? Can we please have better strategists and organizers than California had last year?

I think it's probably worth the risk. We need to push for several reasons. Not least among them is that if several states have marriage equality institutionalized, it will be a relatively short time until federally things start to move and the culture accepts it. Second, and crucially, we need to make the Democratic Party stand for marriage equality. While there are anti-reproductive freedom Democrats in office, we need them to be peripheral - the same should be true ultimately for anti-marriage equality Democrats. We're on the road to that. Obama can be won over too. He's not really anti-marriage equality: it's a tactical question, a political question.