In The Ladies' Room: So Close Maine, So Close
Yesterday Maine voted on gay marriage, which meant that I spent the majority of my night in the following ways:
1) Obsessively refreshing the Bangor Daily News, which was posting unofficial results as they came in.
2) Obsessively chatting with friends who were also just waiting to hear, and analyzing every aspect of the results as they came in.
3) Obsessively flipping to CNN whenever Keith Olbermann decided it was time to talk about baseball and/or his voice got to loud.
4) Hoping that when the Yes vote started creeping above 50% that somehow the No vote would suddenly swing back up.
But I’m not a Maine native; I grew up in New Orleans, which is the exact opposite of Maine in a lot of ways (though probably not as many as people would think). After Hurricane Katrina, my family had to move to Houston, Texas. At that point, though, I had already been attending college in Maine for two years, and since my mother’s entire family lives in the state, I was spending good portions of my summer vacations there as well, and had been for many years.
So when I didn’t have New Orleans to go home to, Maine became the place. Soon after the hurricane my parents bought a house there, so when school was out, I would head there, rather than trek to Houston, a place that felt completely soulless compared to both Maine and New Orleans. Maine became my second home, and one of my favorite places. Except in the winter. I’m sorry, 90 inches of snow is just unnecessary.
When the Maine state legislature first passed gay marriage, I was unbelievably excited. When Governor John Baldacci said that he would sign the law, I was even more excited. Maine has some extremely conservative areas, and for that many legislators and the governor to risk alienating them in order to make a strong stand for equal rights really meant something. Unfortunately, Maine has the people’s veto option–and those opposed to gay marriage wasted no time collecting the 55,000 signatures necessary to get that onto the ballot.
Over the past few months, the Yes on 1 campaign has been resorting to scare tactics in their commercials, preying on people’s irrational fears of explicit lessons about gay sex would be taught to children in school. The No on 1 campaign maintained a focus on equality and relied on heartfelt messages from people of all ages. One of my personal favorites is this speech by Philip Spooner, a World War II veteran:
Stories like Spooner’s and the stories of my friends who still live in Maine and have spent hours canvassing and phonebanking, along with Maine being one of my homes, makes this election incredibly personal for me. Marriage in Maine is important to me because it means that Lindsey, who started canvassing at 6 AM this morning, could marry her long-term girlfriend. It means that I could marry my girlfriend in my parent’s backyard.
When the people of Maine voted not to repeal Maine’s laws preventing discrimination against LGBT people in 2006, it was an exciting moment to end another hard-fought battle. But, as I mentioned before, that battle was so close, I was shocked when the legislature actually passed gay marriage. And I should have been less surprised that the people of Maine voted to repeal the gay marriage law yesterday. But for some reason, maybe since we had done it before, I thought we would be able to do it this time. But we couldn’t. When the numbers finally came in, we couldn’t, but that doesn’t mean that Maine won’t try again.
But hey, Maine did legalize medicinal marijuana last night.
Congratulations Mainers. Apartheid is the breakfast of champions.
After all The Gays are here only to pay taxes for the “special rights” of heterosexuals.
Maine, huh? Can’t blame this one on the blacks.
It’s hard to watch any state take such a huge step backwards, but of course its worse when it is a state you think of as a home. I’m hoping I never am in this position with a state that is so close to my heart. The whole thing borders on devastating.
So much for representative democracy and protecting the rights of minorities. There’s something fundamentally wrong with putting the rights of a not-so-popular minority that comprises about 5% of the population up to popular vote. Anyone else pissed as fuck at our “fierce advocate” president’s absolute silence on this and R-71?
ok, I am a maine native, some thoughts
a> our underclass is not black, but we still have one, trust me, they were imported a while ago and never left, even refusing to learn English for generations
b> the peoples veto is a VERY American ideal that harkens back to the foundation of this nation, so to call it unfortunate is to disregard the fact that the only states with anything left resembling democracy are in New England
c> this was a very close vote, but in the end only 1/6 the population voted to be bigots, I object to the language used to include all of Maine as a whole – conservatives, BTW do not believe in government restrictions of rights and this is very true in Maine, what you should say is Maine has some religious bigots who misread the words of Jesus like the Wyman’s and all their buddies.
d> you should take on the Catholic Church, they manipulate the underclasses and they do in Maine, like everywhere else
yeah it sucks, but we shouldn’t blame Maine, we should target the real enemy: Christian incursions into sequel governance.
oops, sequel should be secular, sorry…this new browser is autocorrecting on my and it is annoying!
@MarkDC
Clearly you’ve never been to Maine and are talking out your ignorant ASS!
I’ve been to Maine several times. Suck my dick.
Dear MarkDC
“I’ve been to Maine several times”. Yeah, Maine Ave!
And in response to your poignent offer of “sucking your dick”, no need Mr. Wordsmith, it’s getting plenty of action at your neighborhood “glory hole”.
For those of us who “get” what happened in Maine. The repeal of the gay marriage law through referendum is a watershed moment that will eventually drive the issue of gay marriage to the Supreme Court.
The way the world wags is always that the last hold out of people who stand in opposition to just about ANYTHING are always the ones who scream the loudest.
The glass isn’t half empty, but half full as it was in the 60’s when the civil rights movement finally forced desegreation to the national stage. Specifically in the state of Alabama where angry mobs representing the last gasp of bigotry terrorized kids as the National Guard took them to school.
Gay marriage in the United States will eventually be universal and Maine is at the front of the making it happen.
Oh, and Dearest MarkDC, pick yourself up a copy of Strunk and White…
How can discrimination be addressed by referendum? The fundamental venue for deciding this matter is flawed.
[...] na coluna que John Corvino mantém no site 365gay. Pra quem lê em inglês, sugerimos também o texto de Amélie Chopkins, do The New Gay, sobre esse [...]
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