I Love NH

I'm very proud of my state this week. On January first, NH House Bill 73 went into effect, finally providing equal rights under the law for one more state's residents. AFAIK (and I'm not going to hunt this out now), New Hampshire is the first state to allow gays full access to marriage via legislation, rather than a court ruling. I am ambivalent about the court-based approach, but I know a lot of people feel very strongly that such things should be handled through the legislature. At least this way "activist judges" can't be held accountable. This is "activist duly elected representatives of the People". My personal opinion is that sometimes it takes a court to decide what is right, as in the case of certain other landmark civil rights cases.

This is a topic that has been discussed to death on my site in the forums. I'm just happy for this outcome.

Either way, I'm sure this isn't completely handled in New Hampshire either, and we have to be vigilant and make sure there aren't any abuses. From here on, married gays should have full visitation, survivorship and community property rights. I'll be very interested to see how long we can go before any of these rights are infringed or challenged.

At some point, there will be a tipping point. Enough states will provide equal rights for their citizens that the rest will fall like dominoes. Hopefully that tipping point is just around the corner.

Come on guys, equal protection under the law for all Americans. It's not hard.