Whatever happend to Same-Sex Marriage in Hawaii?

[Quetzal]

Whatever happend to Same-Sex Marriage in Hawaii?

In 1996, Hawai‘i was a gender-politics pioneer when Circuit Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ruled that the state has no compelling reason to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Today, gay and lesbian Americans from Portland, Oregon, to New Paltz, New York, are rushing to test existing laws that limit marriage to a man and a woman.

In San Francisco, Macy’s ran out of wedding rings last month when city officials defied California’s Proposition 22 (“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”), which voters passed only four years ago.

Meanwhile Hawai‘i, the first state — even before Vermont and Massachusetts — to pave the way for same-sex marriage, is now one of 38 states that limits marriage to a man and a woman.

“Hawai‘i,” comments Robin Nussbaum, the coordinator of the Gay Liberation Program of the American Friends Service Committee in Hawai‘i, “has somehow lost its way.”

What went wrong?

The short answer is that Hawai‘i developed a case of wedding jitters. After its own courts ruled in 1993 and 1996 that the state lacks the compelling rationale necessary to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, Hawai‘i succumbed to its populist tendency to amend its Bill of Rights. The people bolted from the altar of same-sex marriage by adding Section 23—“The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite sex couples”—to Article I of its Constitution.

more...

http://www.honoluluweekly.com/archives/coverstory%202004/4-07-04%20Gay%20marriage/marriage.html

[KamaAina]

1. Populist?! Try a huge publicity blitz from both the Catholics and Mormons

and throw in the antics of one Mike Gabbard, the "Hare Krishna Homophobe", who is now running for Congress :puke: :

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=147x55

and you have the "populist" voters tramping to the polls saying "Baa! Baa! No equal rights! Baaaaaaa!"

Aside: Gabbard got his start at, of all things, a well-known natural foods deli, where he and wife Carol (official homophobe of the Board of Ed.) refused to serve anyone they perceived to be gay.

The Honolulu Weekly box outside this same deli was torched when that same-sex issue came out (ha ha) recently! It is bizarre, to say the least, to live in a place where the Hare Krishnas are a pillar of the Religious Wrong.