{"id":7123,"date":"2009-05-06T11:09:56","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T18:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7123"},"modified":"2010-09-13T10:01:14","modified_gmt":"2010-09-13T17:01:14","slug":"maine-becomes-fifth-state-to-protect-marriage-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7123","title":{"rendered":"Maine Becomes Fifth State to Protect Marriage Equality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/MarriageEquality_Maine.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">Yet another state backs the conservative, Constitutional principle of equal protection under the law for <i>all<\/i>, as Maine&#8217;s Gov. John Baldacci signs the legislature&#8217;s newly approved bill, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abcnews.go.com\/US\/Politics\/wireStory?id=7517057\">allowing for marriage equality<\/a> in the state.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/firstread.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2009\/05\/06\/1924233.aspx\">Said Baldacci upon signing<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.<\/div>\n<p>Maine&#8217;s recognition of equal justice for all, follows <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7048\">Vermont<\/a> whose legislature last month over-rode a gubernatorial veto to pass a marriage equality law. Prior to that, same sex marriages were recognized as Constitutionally protected by Supreme Courts in <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7039\">Iowa<\/a>, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. In all of the state Supreme Court decisions, it was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2009_04\/017589.php\">Republican-appointee who wrote<\/a> the majority opinion.<\/p>\n<p>California&#8217;s court finding has since been overturned by Prop 8, the constitutionality of which is <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=6888\">currently being challenged<\/a>. For the moment then, five states in the union now protect the right of same sex couples to enjoy the same rights that couples of opposite sexes enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet another state backs the conservative, Constitutional principle of equal protection under the law for all, as Maine&#8217;s Gov. John Baldacci signs the legislature&#8217;s newly approved bill, allowing for marriage equality in the state. Said Baldacci upon signing: In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,332,350,126],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay-marriage","category-lgbt","category-maine","category-rights-and-freedoms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7123"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=7123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}