Tweet
On June 3, 2009, only an hour after the New Hampshire legislature took its final vote, marriage equality opponent Governor Lynch signed the marriage equality bill into law. Today at 12:01 AM, January 1, 2010, the law went into effect. New Hampshire joins Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont as the 5th state respecting all residents in its marriage laws. Congratulations New Hampshire!!
Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles southeast, the “democratic” New Jersey Assembly is making a total hash of their duty to the Garden State. According to Garden State Equality:
The Assembly has announced there will not be an Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing on the marriage equality bill, as had been anticipated, this Monday, January 4, 2010. Unacceptable. Time for legislative action is winding down and it is urgent, to say the least, that we keep up the pressure.This Monday, January 4, 2010 at 10:00 am, Garden State Equality and our partner organizations are holding an urgent rally and lobby day for marriage equality at the State House. Meet Monday at 10:00 am in front of Garden State Equality’s Trenton office across from the State House – our Trenton office is at 110 West State Street.
Whether to hold the hearing rests on Assembly Speaker Roberts’ shoulders. If he backed the hearing, the hearing would happen. Here is his statement on the matter:
After more than seven hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 7 and continued public debate in the weeks since, we’ve certainly had a chance to hear all sides on marriage equality legislation. I believe ample opportunity has already been given for all views to be heard and additional Assembly committee debate is not needed. I’ve advised the Senate sponsors that, if the bill is passed by the Senate, I am prepared to bring the bill directly to the Assembly floor for a vote before the end of this legislative session.
If you’re a NJ resident, contact your legislators and show up at the State House on Monday to help convince Speaker Roberts that holding this hearing is the right and necessary thing to do. Tell him to quit hiding behind the Senate like a scared piece of sh!t. But be polite, of course.
19 Comments
So it’s looking likewe’ll have to get New Jersey the same way we got Vermont.
Congrats to our NH neighbors!
Very, VERY happy for you all!
Another imageHappy news requires lots of happy loving images!
AwesomeSoooo putting that one in my presentation. <3 Louise!
I knew NJ would f*ck us overyo jersey
http://cache.gawker.com/assets…
So, where is the issuecoming from? Have the rural Souf Jersey legislators turned all conservative on us? Is it the Catholic contingent from Hoboken and other areas near “the city”? It’s not enough to just report the results. What/who are the barriers here? What can we do to help the fantastic activists that we know have been working this issue for years in Jersey?
New HampshireI’ve been watching the newspapers and the letters to the editor columns. There has been very little reaction here to gay marriage taking affect. No religious press releases, no anti gay groups, no GOP negative comments. I was especially surprised by the silence of the states biggest newspaper the Union Leader. Considering the helabaloo that was raised in Maine it is surprising that a neighboring state, New Hamphire, could institute gay marriage with so little fanfare. Are we that different from our neighbors in Maine? Maybe its the fact that we don’t have the equivalent to Bob Emrich or Mike Heath and their wacko organizations. As far as I know even the Catholic Church hasn’t commented.
New Hampshire stays unequal
Re-think your title, perhaps?
Trans people are still third-class semi-citizens in N.H.
call your legislatorsand ask them. seriously. i’m only reporting the status of the affair because i’m a far-away observer. if you’re in new jersey, you tell us what the deal is with your legislators. consider also contacting garden state equality to volunteer.
the diary is clearly about marriageand thus the term “equality” as it applies to marriage. but your point is well taken – we still have a long way to go in most states on all measures of equality.
It appears to mainly be the Assembly leadership.The marriage bill has a lot of support in the Assembly as well as the Senate, but unfortunately Assembly Speaker Roberts appears to be a bottleneck. Please channel that anger into emails or phone calls to friends who have friends in NJ, and ask them to show up Monday to lobby or get on the horn to their legislators.
I have a hard time believing it will happenThere’s not a whole lot of precedent suggesting that cis LGB people who can get married, care on any kind of organized level about trans people who can’t even get a job.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
fine let’s all just quit now.did it ever occur to you that slapping your allies in the face is not a good way to keep them working in your best interest? tell me now if you want me to stop working in your best interest, because i’m sure i can find other things to occupy my time.
The vote was unanimousThe NH Senate on the day that it voted, narrowly, to legalise same-sex marriage, voted unanimously to not only deny trans people the same employment protection rights that gays have had there for a decade, but to prohibit reconsideration of the issue for at least two years.
Any chance of Trans rights going through got traded away to make the difference in the marriage vote.
Personally… I think it was a good deal. They needed every vote they got, and the chances of Trans rights getting through were slim.
But you can see how saying “we’re working in your best interest” might just attract a little scepticism, even outright derision. Even if that’s sometimes grossly unfair to hard-working individuals like yourself.
Frankly, it’s difficult to see how the lack of your participation could hurt. 0 votes is apparently the best your “help” is able to achieve, and it’s not possible to go negative.
Just don’t work against us unless it’s really necessary, OK? And please don’t treat us like idiots. As I said, I think it was a sound decision. It was neither a slap in the face, nor a stab in the back, but a regrettably necessary piece of horse-trading in a smoke-filled room.
Just don’t tell us that we should be grateful, nor pretend that “we’re working in your best interests”.
Note that this isn’t aimed at you personally. I doubt you had anything to do with it, and are doing your very best on a personal basis to help. And feel slighted that we’re so ungrateful.
Deal with it. As we have to deal with the NH Senate vote.
No, I won’t “deal with it”I’m frankly sick of being implicated in legislative failures just because I’m cis- and gay. That’s rank bigotry, my friend. Non-T LGBs aren’t some monolith happy to trade away T rights for LGB rights. That is a paranoid, divisive cannard that can only end in loss for all of us. Is that what you want, for all of us to be divided and conquered? Then I hope you enjoy continuing forever in your zero class status.
I’m also sick of allegations being thrown around without a shred of evidence to back them up. Trade? What trade? Evidence? No, you present no evidence. If you think votes happening on the same day is evidence of some nefarious plot, explain every other vote taken each day a vote on HB415 was taken. If you really think there is any LGB organization on earth that has the power and sway to persuade every legislator to vote one way on one bill and another on a different bill, you’re sniffing the fundie glue.
ApologiesTelling someone to “Deal with it” is never right.
One of the joys of Intersex is that my hormone levels are screwed up. Usually titrating the dose works, but recently my E2 levels quintupled for no apparent reason, shattering all previous records, and I had to discontinue estrogen intake for a while.
So what I have now is the mother of all PMT episodes.
You didn’t deserve the tone of my post, and neither did you deserve the contents. I apologise unreservedly.
The sponsor of the bill voted against itAnd in an interview with Blue Hampshire, admitted why she had to vote against her own bill.
It had basically no chance of passing, it was only to gain another 10 yds.
But by trading it away, they got the crucial one vote that made all the difference in same sex marriage.
I wasn’t that the bill wasn’t passed: it was that the vote was unanimous.
See Bismark’s remarks about Politics and sausage making. As I said, I think this was a good deal.
As someone who’s cis- and gay, I’m sure you’d think that trading a unanimous vote against gay rights, rather than a merely losing one, for a crucial winning vote to gain trans rights would be worthwhile, wouldn’t you?
Wouldn’t you?
link?i’d like to read that interview.