If you're planning a trip to Vacationland this summer, be sure to bring your galoshes — the "gay storm" that's been satirized all over the Internet rolled into Maine last week, when Governor John Baldacci, a Democrat, signed into law a bill making Maine the fifth New England state to take steps toward same-sex marriage (Rhode Island being the holdout).
"I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste," Baldacci said about his relatively surprising decision to sign the bill. "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."
The bill, An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom, lifts Maine's prohibition on gay marriage (while re-establishing religious institutions' freedom to marry — or not marry — whomever they want). It was proposed by Democratic state senator Dennis Damon, and passed through the Senate 21-13 and the House 89-57; several prominent GLBT activists who worked on the marriage campaign in the Bay State (including Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders attorney Mary Bonauto) helped organize the efforts in Maine, and Massachusetts State Senator Marian Walsh testified at a day-long public hearing in Augusta. The law is scheduled to go into effect this September.
However — shocker! — same-sex marriage supporters had little time to celebrate. The very day that Baldacci put pen to paper, gay-marriage opponents (led by the Roman Catholic diocese and a group calling itself the Maine Marriage Coalition) announced their intention to put the matter before Maine voters in either 2009 or 2010. They need to collect 55,087 votes to put a "People's Veto" on the ballot, a goal they are confident they can attain. If they manage to do so, gay marriage in Maine will stall until the issue is decided by the public.
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Exploring deep within, Teach a woman to fish...she'll never want to leave, Here it comes again, More 
- Exploring deep within
Hannah Holmes, the Maine-born, Portland-dwelling science writer, naturalist, and friend to all animals has turned her lens deeply inward in her latest book, The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself .
- Teach a woman to fish...she'll never want to leave
The cluster of small shacks that comprise Jim's Smelt Camp in Bowdoinham look like a tiny shantytown; were that it was so — I would move right in.
- Here it comes again
Is it possible to tax stupidity? If so, Maine could generate enough revenue to eliminate the income tax, property tax, excise tax, inheritance tax, and sales tax.
- Light that failed
How has Maine's term-limit law, restricting legislators to eight consecutive years in office, been working since it was approved by voters in 1993?
- Why we live here
By now, we've all heard what the people at Forbes magazine have to say about why Portland is at the top of its annual "America's Most Livable Cities" list. We apparently scored a lot of points on a "leisure index."
- Letters to the Portland editor: May 1, 2009
Is Rick Wormwood an inbred Maineiac as some would speculate?
- Letters to the Portland Editor: July 10, 2009
A recent EqualityMaine campaign letter claimed that gay marriage is "the fight for our lives." I wonder whose lives they are talking about, when AIDS service organizations and community health/reproductive clinics across the state have been tightening their belts and desperately trying to crunch numbers.
- A mighty wind
This past Earth Day, President Barack Obama, speaking at an Iowa wind-turbine factory, delivered a gusty peroration. "The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "America can be that nation. America must be that nation."
- Photos: Stetson Wind in Maine
Photos of Stetson Wind in Washington County, Maine
- After the Question 1 vote
Last Tuesday, Maine became the 31st state to put same-sex marriage to a public vote — and to have it lose.
- Saying their ‘I don’ts’
In case it slipped by one or two of you out there, Maine is a pretty homogenized state overall, even more so than a carton of Oakhurst or Hood milk.
- Less
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