New Hampshire's senate this afternoon voted 13-11 to extend the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, reports the Associated Press. The bill would make New Hampshire the fifth state to legalized same-sex "marriage," and the third to do so this month.
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A last-minute amendment ensuring the right of religious clergy to decline performing same-sex "marriage" ceremonies, and allowing heterosexual couples to choose the words "bride" and "groom" on their marriage certificate rather than simply "spouse," helped gather critical support for the bill.
In late March the House passed a similar bill, which must now be rectified with the Senate version.
Gov. John Lynch has spoken in favor of true marriage in the past, but it is unclear whether he plans to veto the measure.
Read the full article here.
Update: Contact New Hampshire Governor John Lynch and ask him to veto the bill! (Thanks for the tip, Beetle Blogger!)
If you live in N.H. call your governor and see if he'll veto. It's the last chance you'll get to speak up on this issue for a while.
ReplyDeleteThis is ridiculous. Same sex couples can never really marry each other. The law might call it marriage but their union will never be a marriage.
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Secular Heretic, I respect that a same-sex marriage may not match your personal definition of marriage, but I think the New Hampshire legislation accommodates your views by allowing religious institutions to define marriage as they see fit, allowing for the much-lauded (appropriately, I might add) separation of church and state. However, with respect to the "true" definition of "marriage", that has been changing over time with a dynamism that makes almost any static definition of marriage a difficult endeavor. As better stated by the Empire State Pride Agenda, at http://prideagenda.org (and which can be independently verified, I might add):
ReplyDeleteMarriage is a dynamic institution that has evolved throughout history to meet the needs of society.
In fact, much of what was associated with marriage in the past would today be incomprehensible to the majority of Americans. This includes arranged marriages, payment of a dowry, the legally inferior status of women in the marital relationship, polygamous marriages and royal and aristocratic marriage between relatives, such as first cousins.
Here in America, it is easy to find an example in the not too distant past when the institution of marriage changed in a significant way. It was only six decades ago, in 1948, when California became the first state in the nation to say it was unconstitutional to prevent people of different races from marrying. At that time, 38 states still banned interracial marriage. Twenty years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court said the same thing for the whole United States in the famous Loving v. Virginia case.
During the decades between one state first striking down a ban on interracial marriages and the rest of the nation following suit, proponents of the ban used the same language we hear today to fight marriage equality for lesbians and gay men, saying that interracial marriage was “unnatural,” that people of different races could not marry “by definition,” and that society would crumble if the definition of marriage was broadened to include more people. For example, one court decision in 1959 that upheld laws against interracial marriage actually stated: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
Adrian,
ReplyDeleteMarriage, as defined by God since Adam and Eve, has always been between a man and a woman. Other variants and laws may change over time, but that truth is constant.
I think what Secular Heretic is trying to say is that you can call an apple an orange, and even demand that everyone else does the same, but it is still an apple and will always be an apple.