Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Marriage equality will come to Delaware!

Beating back what I can only describe as a "wall of crazy," marriage equality supporters in Delaware succeeded in making that state the 11th to legalize gay marriage:

The Delaware Senate passed a marriage equality bill Tuesday on a 12-9 vote, following the House's passage of the bill in late April.

Speaking in favor of the bill before the vote, Sen. Bryan Townsend said, "I hope we begin to treat as equals all those who wish to announce their love and commitment to the world."

Gov. Jack Markell will sign the bill, making Delaware the 11th state to recognize same-sex couples' marriage rights. The bill will go into effect on July 1, and all civil unions not converted to marriages or dissolved by July 1, 2014, will be automatically converted into marriages.

During the course of the afternoon, Sen. Karen Peterson came out publicly to her colleagues as a lesbian, discussing what the bill would do for her and her longtime partner.

Senator David P. Sokola, the bill's lead sponsor in the Senate, led debate for the supporters, including calling on Equality Delaware's leader, Mark Purpura. Purpura went through the bill, section by section, to explain its purposes.

From what I read on twitter, opponents of marriage equality seemed to employ a strategy of throwing mud on the wall and going with what stuck. At times,  their testimony seemed like a bad sketch from Monty Python as priests, pastors, religious right spokespeople, and legislators invoked portents of doom, spun inaccurate tales of anti-Christian discrimination, and even took to reading facebook comments.

But for the life of me, I don't know where Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor fit in it all because they even called her name.

It doesn't matter because the bill has passed and will most likely be signed today.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the testimony of the bigots in RI was comprised mostly of priests and pastors.

And in every case they all spouted the same bovine effluent. Every one of them. It got to the point where after a few years of testifying I stopped because I knew the legislature at that time wasn't going to do jack shit.

Oh and though I'll never get credit for it, it was myself and the former director of Marriage Equality RI that started moving the organization in a political direction which is ultimately what won us marriage equality.