{"id":13619,"date":"2011-02-24T23:29:10","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T07:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2011\/02\/24\/13619.html"},"modified":"2011-02-24T23:29:10","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T07:29:10","slug":"from-sea-to-shining-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2011\/02\/24\/from-sea-to-shining-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"From sea to shining sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today, new Hawai&#x02BB;i governor Neil Abercrombie <a href=\"http:\/\/www.staradvertiser.com\/news\/20110224_Today_is_an_amazing_day.html\">signed civil unions into law<\/a>. And these are strong civil unions, of the marriage-in-all-but-name variety. (And they're available to couples regardless of gender, so opposite-sex couples can get civil-unioned should they so desire.)<\/p>\n<p>It's been a long hard road since the 1990s, when Hawai&#x02BB;i became the first state to achieve marriage equality but then had it taken away. And it's still not back, but this is a big step.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the law doesn't go into effect until January of 2012, so couples who want a civil union will have to wait ten months. I'm not clear on why so long a delay. But better late than never.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, on the same day but on the shore of a different ocean, the Maryland state Senate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/glbt-events-in-baltimore\/md-senate-approves-same-sex-marriage-bill\">approved marriage equality<\/a>. It now goes to the state House of Delegates. Emphasis has been on the Senate until now because the House is generally regarded as more liberal; unfortunately, it sounds like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2011\/02\/24\/AR2011022406625.html\">passage is not yet certain<\/a> in the House. But here's hoping. If that works out, the next stop is the governor, who has promised to sign it.<\/p>\n<p>All this the day after Obama and the DOJ took a step back from defending DOMA. A banner week for marriage equality so far; let's hope the news continues good.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, new Hawai\u02bbi governor Neil Abercrombie signed civil unions into law. And these are strong civil unions, of the marriage-in-all-but-name&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-samesex-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}