A Note on Maine and New Hampshire

As noted earlier, Maine's legislature comfortably passed a bill mandating equality in civil marriage, a bill quickly signed into law by the governor. And later this afternoon New Hampshire's legislature followed suit; their bill now awaits the governor's signature.

Commence the anti-gay screaming. Comments on the Bangor paper's story ran about half-and-half, which is standard fare for the intertubes, and a recurrent theme among the anti-equality set was the contention that the legislature was not doing its job properly, and a "People's Veto"--Mainese for "referendum," as far as I can tell--is going to be mustered.

First they howled when the Massachusetts and Iowa state supreme courts mandated equality, because they were prima facie examples of activist judges legislating from the bench. Why, they sputtered, laws should come from the legislature, not a bunch of black-robed social anarchists! Who may or may not have been appointed by a Republican! And now that the legislatures have enacted equality laws in Vermont and Maine (and are almost there in New Hampshire), they're sputtering that duly elected representatives of the people aren't actually representative enough, and that this particular question of this particular civil right should be decided only by the people themselves, the more foam at the mouth the better.

What happens if the people actually fail to overturn the enacted law? The NOMmers will run to that same supreme court full of activist social anarchists and demand that the will of the people be overturned. And there will be more signature-gathering and more out-of-state money flowing in and more busloads of retirees from Provo overloading the Denny's at the state line, round and round and round.

Their opposition has to end somewhere. How awesome if it would simply end here in the face of the amazing tide rolling across the Northeast over the past week.