Marriage Equality in the Land of Liberty: A 50-State Rundown

Marriage Equality in the Land of Liberty: A 50-State Rundown
A useful chart going from legal - to 'totally paranoid' states, with the variety of laws for marriage, civil unions, and legal partnerships:
Five states - Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampsire and the District of Columbia
have taken to heart the rights of all people, guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The following states protect the civil rights of their citizens by ensuring marriage equality for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Washington Senate Approves Recognizing Out-of-State Gay Marriages

Washington Senate Approves Recognizing Out-of-State Gay Marriages
The Washington Senate approved a bill this week for the state to recognize as domestic partnerships any same-sex marriages that have been enacted in other jurisdictions.
Under a law passed in 2009 that was upheld at the ballot, domestic partnerships in Washington are open to both same-sex and opposite sex couples and provide the same state-governed rights as marriage.
Washington already recognizes out-of-state civil unions and domestic partnerships, but current law excludes same-sex marriages.
Representative Laurie Jinkins, who was the lead sponsor of the bill in the House, has said she is "ecstatic" at the Senate vote but was quick to point out that this isn't a new right the Legislature has come up with, but rather an ironing out of an inequality in existing law.

Ethical readings

I'm going to post a list of ethical readings, as soon as I finish editing it :-)  But here is a great selection from John Stuart Mill's "On the Subjugation of Women" from last nights's wedding (we also turned out the lights for Earth Hour, and the 'sustainable' caterer had backup heat)

"What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and reciprocal superiority in them — so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development — I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage." (Subjection of Women 4)

Netherlands marks a decade of gay marriage

Netherlands marks a decade of gay marriage |
AMSTERDAM (AFP) – The Netherlands celebrated the 10th anniversary of the world's first legally binding gay marriage with another set of nuptials Friday, mixing the formal with the casual.
"I declare you, in my position as mayor of Amsterdam, joined by the rights of marriage," Eberhart van der Laan told Jan van Breda and his partner Thijs Timmermans at the Museum of History in Amsterdam.
The happy couple, dressed in a dark formal suit with mauve shirt for one and a black T-shirt for the other, turned up for the ceremony on foot, with van Breda holding a red balloon in the shape of a heart carrying the figure '10.' "Your personal ceremony takes place in a wider context," mayor van der Laan told the happy, tearful couple. "It is exactly 10 years ago today that the first same-sex marriage was celebrated by my predecessor," he added.
On that occasion, it was Helene Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus who walked down the aisle into the history books as the world's first legally wed lesbian couple. "We married for love, not politics. But of course we were aware it was an historic moment," 41-year-old Thus, a notary assistant and gay rights campaigner, told AFP ahead of Friday's anniversary.

By tying the knot in front of the world's press, "we wanted to make other people think about how horrible it is to be denied something that is a natural right for others," added her wife, 44-year-old notary Faasen. "A heterosexual person never needs to think about whether he is allowed to marry or not, he simply needs to be lucky enough to find the love of his life."
The Netherlands was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2001. Faasen and Thus, both in traditional, flowing wedding gowns, exchanged the first vows alongside three pairs of grooms in Amsterdam on April 1 that year before then mayor Job Cohen.
Since then, nearly 15,000 gay and lesbian couples have wed in the Netherlands -- about two percent of the total number of marriages registered between 2001 and 2010, based on figures from the Central Statistics Bureau.