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Granite Staters, be sure to attend your Town Meeting so you can vote for equality! Most are happening on Tuesday, March 9th. If only the anti-equality activists show up to vote, it’ll send the erroneous message that New Hampshire opposes marriage equality. Here is what’s at stake:
As of the beginning of this month, 734 of our fellow New Hampshire gay and lesbian friends, neighbors, and family members have been able to be married since the beginning of this year. That has been possible because of passage by our State Legislature of House Bill 436, which provides for marriage equality.They have been allowed to make legal commitments to share their love and caring for one another as couples. What a wonderful gift to them all. Their commitments as couples to their loved ones makes our state, and the institution of marriage and all that it represents, even stronger.
On Town Meeting Day this Tuesday, a number of communities have warrant questions on their ballots about marriage equality. The wording of the question in most towns considering this matter sounds “innocent” enough: “The citizens of New Hampshire should be allowed to vote on an amendment to the New Hampshire Constitution that defines ‘marriage.’”
We should not vote to write discrimination into our Constitution. It is a document that provides for governmental structure and for guarantees of our citizen rights, not for discrimination. I urge the good people of our towns to vote “no” on the question. I hope readers of BlueHampshire.com will go to their town meetings and speak out in opposition.
This whole warrant article business is a ploy by a small group of republicans hoping to increase their name recognition by trying to make marriage equality a wedge issue in November. The warrants are advisory only and don’t have any legal effect, but if they pass they will bolster the efforts of marriage equality opponents in the legislature by creating the illusion that marriage inequality is a priority for most Granite Staters.
According to the Union Leader, 133 of the New Hampshire’s 221 towns will vote on this warrant on Tuesday. During earlier deliberative sessions, 15 towns demonstrated their commitment to marriage equality by amending their proposed anti-equality warrants, rendering them meaningless. This is an excellent sign of the pro-equality mood in the state, but again, if people don’t show up to their Town Meeting and stick around long enough to vote “no” on the warrant, a different message will be sent.
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18 Comments
Just to clarify thingsIn NH there are three types of political entities, SB2 towns, town meeting towns, and cities. Cities operate like any other city and do not have town meetings. If a town feels it has become too big for a town meeting it can opt out and become a SB2 town where the budget and other town decisions are voted on in a regular election held on the second tuesday in March. Most of the other towns will be holding their town meetings on Saturday the 13th. This is to allow people who work a chance to attend.
Some of the towns are actually larger than most of the cities in NH. For example Londonderry and Hudson are larger than Portsmouth, Laconia, Lebanon, and Keene. Both Londonderry and Hudson are SB2 towns. Londonderry will be voting on the gay marriage issue while Hudson won’t because not enough voters signed the petition. Because the cities and some towns will not be voting only about 50 to 60% of the voters will have the issue before them.
The Bishop’s StatementThe Catholic church finally weighed in with this announcement.
http://www.catholicnh.org/publ…
Let’s not forgetour esteemed Representative David Bates whose letnhvote website is all about donations – er, I mean protecting marriage! protecting marriage! He is the Union Leader’s go-to guy and they keep featuring him as some sort of noble crusader. He also happens to be working with the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage to unseat our governor and replace pro-equality legislators
( http://nomblog.com/526/ http://nomblog.com/296/ and http://nomblog.com/306/) but this is something the Union Leader refuses to allow mention of even in the comments section of their website. Most New Hampshirites would be rightly incensed if they knew about this. We need to push back against these out-of-state organizations who are making a buck off attempts to pit neighbor against neighbor.
AlsoI also heard the Wit twins, Half and Nit (Camenker and Contrada) are involved or in the talking stage with Bates.
Maybe they should put up the definition of a church to a popular voteThose who meet the definition get the tax exempt status on their income, property and all the other benefits enshrined in our State and Federal Laws.
Those who don’t get treated like businesses and taxed accordingly. I mean, they’d still be corporate bodies, just 2nd class ones that aren’t allowed to call themselves a church. And if anyone questions their status, they can pull out their articles of incorporation or whatever other legal documents their lawyers draw up for them – seriously, it’s not like they don’t have access to those things – why do they need to be called Churches to get it.
Let the people vote! It’s time to protect Traditional Churches!
I’ll be speaking up!I’ll be urging others at the Town Hall meeting in Hollis (which is Wednesday) to vote down the dumb warrant article. I hope we can defeat it!
VoteGood luck. We were lucky here in Hudson, they didn’t get enough people to sign and its not on the ballot.
When do we get to vote on their marriages?
I’d like to see a referendum on whether str8 couples can STAY married.
KensingtonDidn’t have it on the ballot…or they changed the wording, not sure…I used to work at the school in this very small town. It was a big decision for me to come out to my coworkers, and given that it is a small community, soon, everyone knew. I got nothing other than total and complete support. I know, in my heart, that most granite staters do not support discrimination.
Don’t get too cozy.Sorry to burst your bubble, and maybe Kensington is an anomaly, but so far NH is looking like every other state where marriage equality has been put to a vote.
Not goodFrom what I see from talking to people in other towns and what I see on the local blogs its going to be a total win for the “let us vote” warrant articles with some huge margins. Early in the evening results came in from Pittsburg Yes 96% and Stark 100% but I discounted them because they were up north. But now votes are coming in from some big towns like Bedford Yes 87%.
One thing you have to remember is that most of the voters showing up for these town meetings are angry people and only a small percentage of the total voters. Even the SB2 town like Bedford only had 25% of the registered voters show up. I’ve lived here all my life and one thing I’ve learned come hell or high water the Republican right wing naysayers will show up no matter what.
And this is why we don’t let people vote on others’ civil rights.It was pleasant to hope that NH might be different than other states, but sadly it’s not surprising that it isn’t. Every vote on marriage equality has proven that there are no exceptional states in this country. The voting majority always backs bigotry.
Lots of angry peopleLots of angry people turned out to vote down spending and mostly consevative Republicans to boot. I’m surprised that Londonderry, Baldasaro’s hometown, was so close 53% to 47%.
Depressingbut so true.
Sadly, too few get angry about bigotry.If LGBT allies exist in NH in numbers greater than indicated by these vote results, then why weren’t they angry enough about what was on the warrant to bother to vote?
sadBut no…not so surprising. It really hurts me deep inside and I need to develop a thicker skin. I just don’t understand why people are so mean spirited.
It’s plain cruel…and I hope a lot of the voters simply didn’t know what they were doing. How many of these people would have the nerve to look a gay or lesbian couple, possibly a couple with children, in the eyes and say ‘I’m going to dissolve your marriage’ ? I still think this was a calculated stunt and not representative of the state at large. Although I’ve been wrong before… Take heart, ’cause this won’t be over for a LONG time.
I used to think that people were born with a good core and that it takes experience to make them evil. Lately, I’m beginning to think that people are just born with clean slates and that experience makes them selfish, greedy, self-serving, bigoted, self-aggrandizing, vain narcissists. I also have seen that captialism and corporatism is in the mix and that religion seems to push them over the edge.