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Maine's Gay Marriage Repealed in Voter Referendum

Time online reports on Maine's voters repealing gay marriage in that state. GLAD.org, the organization that has engineered most of the gay marriage legal and political efforts across New England and beyond has more information at their website.

I consider gay marriage to be a civil right issue. Consider for a moment what would have happened in 1964 if the deep south had been allowed to have voter referendums on whether they would support the Voting Rights and, and other civil rights legislation, including perhaps, the 14th Amendment.... Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, ... all the states of the old Confederacy -- AT LEAST, would have repealed those pieces of legislation and the Constitution. Possibly, many states in the North, as well, would have repealed some pieces of civil rights laws.

Would we have mixed marriage? Would we have integrated schools or even buses where people of color may ride in the front of the bus? Would black people be welcome in restaurants or be able to drink from water fountains where whites drink, even now? Would the Reverend Martin Luther King even have found a toe hold for any of his work in that world? I do not think so!

If you allow the majority to rule in the matter of civil rights, the minority will NEVER be granted their rights.

And that is why you DO NOT have voter referendums on civil rights matters.

And that is why we SHOULD NOT have voter referendums on the matter of gay marriage.

It is a matter of civil rights.

Full post as published by Out of the Jungle on November 04, 2009 (boomark / email).