The Time for Justice Is Always Now

The morning after the Maine election, I know I should be taking comfort in the closeness of the vote and feeling joy at the narrow victory of a referendum on “all but marriage” in Washington state, but you know what? I can’t.

I just can’t feel good that 53 percent of the voters in Maine went out of their way to take away the rights of a minority group. And I feel just like I did in 2004 and 2008 after similar votes: I look around at the straight people in the world acting like they accept me and maybe even like me and know that half of them are lying.

The other thing that bugs? A whole lot of Mainers can smell the poutine wafting over the border from Canada, which has gay marriage, and all of them can surely see for themselves that it has caused absolutely none of the apocalyptic scenarios that the haters conjure. As with health care, Americans apparently have no interest in learning anything from other countries’ experience.

Right now, my long-dormant separatist tendencies are surging big-time. I’m looking at the map and trying to figure out which part of New York City might be most hospitable for the state of New Audre. Sisters, won’t you join me?

More on Maine's vote against gay marrriage from Emily Bazelon.

Tags: gay marriage, maine, question 1, same-sex marriage; ballot initatives

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Comments

Smelling the poutine

By: sugar_k | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 17:07

As a former Mainer who still thinks of that state as home, I was disappointed by yesterday's result on behalf of many of my friends who advocated strongly to preserve the right to gay marriage. It really seems to be an age issue--I don't know anyone below the age of 40 who voted Yes.

I just have to take issue with one sentence here, the one about how Mainers can smell the poutine from over the border in Canada. Actually, it's pretty rare for that to happen. Maine's population is overwhelmingly concentrated in the southern part of the state, along the coast and in the I-95 corridor up to Bangor. The parts of the state bordering Canada are vastly uninhabited, except for the farmland of the St. John Valley on the northeastern edge of the state. Aside from college kids going on spring break in Quebec where they can drink, Mainers are much more likely to travel to the Caribbean than to Canada. That's especially true for the kind of Mainer who was inclined to vote Yes on 1. So no, it would be nice to think that Maine might learn from Canada's positive experience with gay marriage, but they're no more likely to do that than voters in Georgia or California.

Yes.

By: feministworkingmom | Wed, 11/04/2009 - 11:24

It made me angry last fall in California too.