Same Sex Marriages Begin In Maryland

With both the District of Columbia and Maryland now allowing full gay marriage, Virginia's backwardness on social issues is being highlighted.   While Northern Virginia benefits from its close proximity to liberal Washington, D.C., much of the rest of Virginia - certainly outside of the urban areas - remains a backwater where Christofascists and rednecks rein supreme.  The irony, of course, is that these same areas suffer from the highest unemployment in the state and have difficulty attracting new business and industry.  Would that the inhabitants would take a good look in the mirror and get the massage that THEY THEMSELVES are the biggest hurdle to future prosperity.  Few progressive and forward thinking businesses want to relocate to backward, ignorant and bigoted locales - and with good reason: key employees would refuse to relocate.  

An article in the Virginian Pilot looks at the arrival of same sex marriages and predictably, the majority of comments by subscribers display the knuckle dragging bigotry that helps keep Hampton Roads from attracting more progressive businesses and continues to fuel the flight of college educated young adults from the area.  Will Virginia wake up to the fact that same sex marriage is good for business?  Not so long as the General Assembly is controlled by the Virginia GOP which cowers before Christofascists at The Family Foundation. Here are highlights from the article on events across the Potomac:

Same-sex couples in Maryland were greeted with cheers and noisemakers held over from New Year's Eve parties, as gay marriage became legal in the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line on New Year's Day

The ceremonies follow a legislative fight that pitted Gov. Martin O'Malley against leaders of his Catholic faith. Voters in the state, founded by Catholics in the 17th century, sealed the change by approving a November ballot question.

Shortly after, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore wrote to O'Malley that same-sex marriage went against the governor's faith.

"As advocates for the truths we are compelled to uphold, we speak with equal intensity and urgency in opposition to your promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith, not to mention the best interests of our society," wrote O'Brien, who served as archbishop of the nation's first diocese from October 2007 to August 2011.

The governor was not persuaded. He held a news conference in July 2011 to announce that he would make same-sex marriage a priority in the 2012 legislative session. He wrote back to the archbishop that "when shortcomings in our laws bring about a result that is unjust, I have a public obligation to try to change that injustice."

The measure, with exemptions for religious organizations that choose not to marry gay couples, passed the House of Delegates in February in a close vote. O'Malley signed it in March. Opponents then gathered enough signatures to put the bill to a statewide vote, and it passed with 52 percent in favor.

Kudos again for O'Malley for grasping the concept of freedom of religion and the concept of the separation of church and state.  Religion has no place in the civil laws.  Neither do the views of the morally bankrupt child rapist protectors in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Martin O’Malley v. Bob McDonnell: The Democrat v. GOP Divide in Microcosm

An article in the Washington Post looks at the rivalry across the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland and their respective governors as well as Martin O'Malley's correct predictions on the outcomes of Tuesday's elections.   But the article also brings out the glaring gulf between the agenda of the Democrat Party and that of today's Christianist/thinly veiled white supremacist controlled Republican Party.  The Democrats seek to expand the rights and protections of citizens and stamp out discrimination while the GOP seeks to uphold discrimination and reduce the rights of citizens, especially those who are gay, non-white and female. Think I'm exaggerating?  Look at the last session of the GOP controlled Virginia General Assembly: the GOP sought to take women back 50 years in time in terms of being able to control their own bodies, defeated employment protections for LGBT Virginians - even those employed by the state and its agencies - and pushed through voter identification laws in an effort to disenfranchise minorities.  Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell presided over the entire travesty and only sought to lessen the horrific treatment of women when he realized his ambitions to be Mitt Romney's VP nominee were suffering.  In Maryland, Martin O'Malley presided over an opposite legislative effort to expand rights and protections.  Here are some article excerpts:

In their civil but pointed rivalry for cross-Potomac bragging rights, Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley scored a nearly complete victory over his Virginia counterpart, Republican Bob McDonnell, in Tuesday’s election.

O’Malley led his party to triumphs on four statewide ballot questions. He also used a new, gerrymandered electoral map to swipe a U.S. congressional seat from the GOP.

On two of the ballot questions, O’Malley helped win advances for Latinos and gay and lesbian voters. Both are important Democratic constituencies whose support should prove quite useful for an ambitious politician eyeing national office.

McDonnell failed to deliver Virginia, a critical national battleground state, for either Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney or U.S. Senate candidate George Allen.  .  .  .  . 

Romney’s overall loss to President Obama also marked a setback for McDonnell’s national ambitions. He had harbored hopes of being appointed to Romney’s Cabinet, ideally as attorney general.  Instead, the Virginian will have to listen politely while O’Malley boasts about the Democrats’ successes when the two of them appear — as they often do — as antagonists on national television political talk shows.

Moreover, Tuesday’s results suggest that McDonnell hasn’t done enough to nudge the Virginia GOP toward the political center. That’s partly because he is conservative and partly because his room to maneuver is limited by even more conservative Republicans in the General Assembly.
In any case, the party’s profile is hurting its prospects in presidential years when turnout jumps among minorities and young people.

Across the river, meanwhile, O’Malley is positioning himself to appeal to just those growing groups. He won big for Latinos by advocating successfully for the ballot measure known as the Dream Act. It allows undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at Maryland universities.

He won big for gays and lesbians — and boosted his appeal to the younger generation — with a historic popular vote endorsing same-sex marriage. “I think the results yesterday show that O’Malley can do very well in the coalition of the ascendant,” Eberly said, using a term popular with the Obama campaign that describes a political alliance among expanding demographic segments.

McDonnell (whom I have known since 1994)  has consistently sold his soul to the Christofascist led by The Family Foundation and those who are little more better than closeted KKK members who comprise the ugliest elements in Virginia - as did my former classmate, George Allen.  The good news is that these groups appear to be slowly losing power in Virginia.  One can only hope that with time today's version of the GOP will likewise soon find itself on the wrong side of history and out of power.