Breaking: Vermont Legalises Gay Marriage

[Duckie]

Vermont legalizes gay marriage with veto override

7 minutes ago

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It's now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — As expected, the Vermont Senate has overridden the governor's veto of a bill that would allow same-sex marriage.

The House planned to take up the issue later Tuesday, but it's unclear whether there are enough votes to override the veto by Gov. Jim Douglas.

If there are, Vermont would become the fourth state to legalize marriages of gay and lesbian couples.

The others are Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa.

We win! A monumentous day, if this news from AP si correct. The senate news was 1 hour ago.

[Darth Wong]

And let us all take this opportunity to issue a hearty "fuck you" to the governor who made this override necessary with his Imperial Edict in the first place.

[Duckie]

Better- let's hope it effects his reelection chances. Republicans in a position of power in New England? What is the world coming to! ^^

Apparently the governor pissed off the Democrats in the legislature by vetoing despite them having a supermajority in both chambers- disrespecting the will of the state, essentially, putting his own concerns over those.

[General Zod]

It's pretty impressive that it's happening in Vermont of all places. Now if California could just get its shit together.

[Duckie]

It's pretty impressive that it's happening in Vermont of all places. Now if California could just get its shit together.

Vermont is actually pretty liberal- it was the second state to have civil unions right after California, and it doesn't have a massive mormon or redneck part of the state like California. Even conservatives there, like in NH, are more "Democrats With Guns" than actual conservatives.

[General Zod]

It's pretty impressive that it's happening in Vermont of all places. Now if California could just get its shit together.

Vermont is actually pretty liberal- it was the second state to have civil unions right after California, and it doesn't have a massive mormon or redneck part of the state like California. Even conservatives there, like in NH, are more "Democrats With Guns" than actual conservatives.

Maybe it's just the whole New England vibe. Outside of New York it's not a region I generally consider to be on the liberal side of things.

[Duckie]

Maybe it's just the whole New England vibe. Outside of New York it's not a region I generally consider to be on the liberal side of things.

???

You don't consider New England to be a very liberal place? But you do consider New York to be (by which I assume you mean the city but not the 50% of the upstate that is conservative and republican). That's just backwards, man. New England has a folksy, towny type of vibe, but small-town new england is completely different from small-town america. And vermont, if you've heard the old "X considers Y to be a Yankee" is the most traditionally 'New Englandy' of the New England states.

New England is one of the two major liberal hotspots in the united states, the other being its sibling in the Northwest. For example, massachusetts legalising gay marriage. The PVI of New England is enough that there is not a single republican house of representatives member, and only the a few republican senators (and New England Republicans like Snowe are my favorite democrats- they have helped liberal causes far more than Blue Dogs ever have) survived the massacre in 2008.

Vermont has the only avowed socialist Senator in the country.

It's a pretty liberal place- like Canada light. Even has maple syrup. And gay marriage. ^^

[Thanas]

I would - I have been in Vermont five times so far and have lived there for several months in total and even the churchgoing conservatives were pretty much laid-back and realistic...none of that "RAR USA" bullcrap.

The electorate is actually pretty liberal too - and their politicians as well. The senior senator from Vermont, iirc, was one of the few to speak out against the wiretapping etc. when 9/11 was still fresh.

[General Zod]

???

You don't consider New England to be a very liberal place? But you do consider New York to be (by which I assume you mean the city but not the 50% of the upstate that is conservative and republican). That's just backwards, man. New England has a folksy, towny type of vibe, but small-town new england is completely different from small-town america.

The folksy/towny type of vibe is the large reason it never struck me as liberal. Of course I've never been that far back east either, so I suppose it's largely based on perceptions of popular media.

[Darth Wong]

It's all relative. I doubt that if I went to Vermont, I would come away with the impression that I'd just visited a very liberal place. But someone from, say, Alabama ...

[Majin Gojira]

My impression of Vermont and even Upstate New York has been colored by places that can be described simply as "After Woodstock, some Hippies didn't get to far."

Other than that, this is amazing news!

[Crossroads Inc.]

Gay Marriage is passed, let the shierkfest begin!!!
"care of comments from foxnews:

Vermonters SHOULD BE FORWARNED! You have invited the disasters that is coming to your state from the HAND OF GOD for your twisted, perverted, politically 'correct' votes. You have turned your back on the very God who has spared you from the disasters that will surely visit your state in the near future. Whether you vote for queers marrying or not, God will see to it that your punishment is JUST! Remember Katrina? That disaster fell on the very day there was to be a 'big' gay pride parade! You had a choice, you decided against God, for that we will all pay dearly - You have just decided your fate - May God have Mercy on us all!

Warms my heart, really.

[Trogdor]

I love it when crazy fundamentalists claim that Katrina was divine punishment for New Orleans' gay friendly attitude, completely ignoring the fact that the French Quarter wasn't flooded, despite just about every section of city next to it having been.

Or, as Jon Stewart put it, "Turns out God doesn't hate gays. He hates the gay adjacent."

[Darth Wong]

Vermonters SHOULD BE FORWARNED! You have invited the disasters that is coming to your state from the HAND OF GOD for your twisted, perverted, politically 'correct' votes.

Interesting how it's "political correctness" to respect the rights of groups, unless it's your group.

You have turned your back on the very God who has spared you from the disasters that will surely visit your state in the near future.

Preach it, brother! We should all be like Israel, which was rewarded for being God's Chosen People by ... well, two thousand years of shit, actually.

Whether you vote for queers marrying or not, God will see to it that your punishment is JUST! Remember Katrina? That disaster fell on the very day there was to be a 'big' gay pride parade! You had a choice, you decided against God, for that we will all pay dearly - You have just decided your fate - May God have Mercy on us all!

People like this look forward to suffering with glee in their eyes, because they hope it will "teach people a lesson" and bring them back to the faith. It's really sick. They're all borderline sociopaths, if not outright sociopaths.

[Duckie]

Whether you voted for it or not? How the hell does living in an immoral area make you immoral? By that logic Noah should have been drowned with the rest of the world, and Lot burned in Sodom.

God must have pretty poor aim if he's going to punish the third of the state that opposes gay marriage too.

[Darksider]

God must have pretty poor aim if he's going to punish the third of the state that opposes gay marriage too.

Have you read the bible?

Two entire cities annihilated for becoming too sinful, down to the last woman and child. Then there was the whole poisoning of egypt's food supply and slaughtering their first born children to punish the actions of the Pharoh.

When has god ever been precise with his judgement?

Let's face it, in terms of weaponry, god is more like a carpet bombardment from a B-52 or a nuclear strike than a JDAM or other precision weapon. He really doesn't give a shit about collateral damage.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

*Chatters excitedly*

I can't believe they found the votes to override his veto. It's like the world just told my walls of cynicism to go take a vacation.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ladies and gecklefins! Once again, in fairnes to reporting "Both sides" of the issue... I know bring before you a Dissenting vote from the folks over at:
townhall.com Opinion page...

Iowa Court, Vermont Legislators Ban Common Sense
by Robert Knight
1 Robert Knight's Email | Author Archive | Author Biography Read Comments | Post Comments

To a disturbing number of judges, most of the media, and now the Vermont legislature, marriage was created only to shut out homosexuals. That’s it. There’s no other reason for its presence in the law.

How else to interpret the vote today (April 7) in the Senate and House to override Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto and to legalize same-sex “marriage?” Or the rulings in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut and Iowa that find nothing unique about men and women bonding for life? Or headlines like this from the April 4 Wall Street Journal:

“Iowa Supreme Court Overturns Gay-Marriage Ban”

The Iowa law, as with most states, does not mention same-sex relationships. It establishes requirements, beginning with a male-female couple. Characterizing this ruling as overturning a “ban” defines the institution negatively – by what it is not.

In its unanimous opinion in Varnum v. Brien, the Iowa Supreme Court says that real marriage is merely a form of “prejudice” (using that word 21 times) and hints that homosexuals might be better parents than the mother-father variety. The seven justices cite junk science from gay-dominated guilds (the American Psychological Assn., etc.) to float the idea that kids are no better off in a normal home:

“Almost every professional group that has studied the issue indicates children are not harmed when raised by same-sex couples, but to the contrary, benefit from them. …we acknowledge the existence of reasoned opinions that dual-gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. These opinions, while thoughtful and sincere, were largely unsupported by reliable scientific studies.”

Say what? They have it exactly backwards. It’s the “gay parenting” studies that are deeply flawed, as Drs. Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai demonstrate thoroughly in their devastating book No Basis: What the studies Don’t tell us about same-sex parenting. Meanwhile, oceans of data from every conceivable authority show the advantages of the mother-and-father, intact family.

The Iowa court, like the others before it, and the hippy dippy Vermont lawbreakers ask us to believe, absurdly, that men and women have no meaningful differences. Even homosexuals think the sexes are quite different, preferring one over the other.

The creation of counterfeit “marriage” is a finger in the eye of God, who created marriage as the first human institution. Jesus reminded the Pharisees:

“Have you not read that He which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh?” (Mark 19:4,5, Gen. 2:24)

But in America’s kookier courts and trendy New England, the Bible – the founding document of Western legal thought – is ruled irrelevant, and marriage is a speed bump on the road to sexual liberation.

The Iowa judges say that keeping marriage male and female “does not substantially further any important governmental objective.”

Really? Society would survive without a single homosexual relationship, but it would collapse without marriage. The law recognizes that marriage is unique and irreplaceable. Lots of homosexuals are wonderful, caring people, and some have close relationships, but that does not make them “married” any more than a brother and sister can be “married.”

Rep. Barney Frank often asks the straw man question, “How does my gay relationship hurt your marriage?”

On an individual basis, it doesn’t. But creating a falsehood in the law transforms morality into a form of bigotry. The implications are enormous, according to gay columnist Michelangelo Signorile, who said in 1994 that gays should “fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.”

Does that sound like merely adding another harmless category?

In 2004, just after Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney began issuing same-sex marriage licenses even though the legislature never authorized them, National Public Radio reported an immediate effect. A lesbian eighth-grade teacher told NPR that same-sex “marriage” made it okay for her to describe in graphic detail homosexual sex acts to her students. Elementary school pupils were soon treated to readings of King & King and Heather Has Two Mommies. A father who objected wound up in jail.

As marriage has been devalued by easy divorce, cohabitation and now, in certain benighted venues, the ejection of an entire sex from the two-sex formula, this does not “improve” society. What is billed as “progressive” is actually moral corruption.

God Almighty created marriage thousands of years before the men of Sodom thought they had a better idea. If judicial tyrants have their way, America will outdo Sodom and even decadent Greece and Rome, where same-sex “marriage” was unthinkable.

When apprised of the Iowa court’s arrogant ruling, a state Senate minority leader thundered that it was: “disappointing.” He did pledge to support a constitutional amendment protecting marriage.

That’s good and necessary. But when is a legislature or governor going to tell rogue judges that the jig is up? When are citizens going to tell public officials at all levels that they simply don’t have the authority to radically redefine marriage and set up our children and grandchildren for mandatory lessons about same-sex coupling?

While it’s still legal, the resistance had better get organized – and busy.

As always, fun bits bolded for humor

[Ziggy Stardust]

Awesome news.

Though I must say I'm surprised there are posters here who didn't realize NEW ENGLAND was liberal. It's the single most liberal part of the country (that is, it statistically votes more liberally than even urban California and the Pacific Northwest in presidential elections).

[Terralthra]

Crossroads Inc., where do you find shit like that? I'm flabbergasted by the amount of ethnocentricity and blind adherence to religious ideology.

[Ma Deuce]

Suddenly I'm reminded of that famed Glenn Reynolds quote about his ideal America being "happily married gay couples with closets full of assault weapons": Yeah, that looks like Vermont as of now, and I'll join in with the others in saying I'm not surprised by this at all, as I visit there just about every summer.

[Crossroads Inc.]

townhall.com is a wealth of Religious, bigoted and closed mindded thinking.

[wautd]

Gay Marriage is passed, let the shierkfest begin!!!
"care of comments from foxnews:

Vermonters SHOULD BE FORWARNED! You have invited the disasters that is coming to your state from the HAND OF GOD for your twisted, perverted, politically 'correct' votes. You have turned your back on the very God who has spared you from the disasters that will surely visit your state in the near future. Whether you vote for queers marrying or not, God will see to it that your punishment is JUST! Remember Katrina? That disaster fell on the very day there was to be a 'big' gay pride parade! You had a choice, you decided against God, for that we will all pay dearly - You have just decided your fate - May God have Mercy on us all!

Warms my heart, really.

Brilliant. I wonder if their are there also atheists who oppose same-sex marriage or do you have to be a mindless God-drone for that? Skimming over comment sections over the years I honestly can't remember someone being against it without having religious grounds.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Bear in mind Mass. has had gay marriage for, what, 4, 5 years now? And as far as I know civilization has not collapsed there, nor have they been struct by the fist of God...

[Darth Wong]

Brilliant. I wonder if their are there also atheists who oppose same-sex marriage or do you have to be a mindless God-drone for that? Skimming over comment sections over the years I honestly can't remember someone being against it without having religious grounds.

If there are, I'd bet money that they're just pretending to be atheists so they can claim to be doing it on non-religious grounds.