Legalization of Gay Marriage Celebrates Anniversary (HAPPY MAY 17th!)

Just out from the LA Times. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY EVERYONE!
Another milestone for human rights.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anniversary17may17,0,413176.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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4:58 PM PDT, May 16, 2005 latimes.com

Legalization of Gay Marriage Celebrates Anniversary
By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer


BOSTON -- In the year since Massachusetts became the only state to permit gays and lesbians to wed, nearly 6,000 same-sex couples have traded marriage vows.

To commemorate the May 17 anniversary, many of those couples plan to waltz at a gala party at Boston's swank Copley Plaza Hotel and pose for a group photograph outside the Massachusetts statehouse. Among other festivities around the state, the Boston suburb of Belmont plans an ice cream social.

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But those celebrations occur against a sobering national backdrop for supporters of same-sex marriage: a powerful coast-to-coast backlash has meant that rather than emerging as the legal trendsetter on marriage for gays and lesbians, Massachusetts has become a cultural anomaly.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have successfully marshaled forces to prevent other states from following suit. Legalizing same-sex marriage has had the effect -- unintended by its backers -- of providing a new sense of purpose for groups and individuals that identify themselves as "pro-family."

Supporters of traditional marriage are carefully monitoring measures concerning gays and lesbians in legislatures around the country. They study school curricula, watching for signs of acceptance of same-sex family structures. To keep the topic in the public eye, they stage rallies -- including one last month at a parking lot in Augusta, Maine, during a bitter spring rainstorm that drew 1,000 supporters.

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to a smoldering ruin. Gay couples have not been struck by lightning. Fabric of society has not noticeably unraveled. Huh. Go figure.

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Despite predictions you have not gone to Hell in a hand basket. "Traditional Marriages" have not gone the way of the dinosaur. The family has not been destroyed. Things are actually better than they were a year before, except for the paranoid fanatics who continue to get their knickers in a bunch.


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/17/SAMESEX.TMP



But let's not worry about them right now.