"Six by Twelve"

[dsdrane]

This article (http://www.glad.org/current/news-detail/five-years-after-goodridge-glad-announces-6x12/) caught my eye this morning.

It reports on GLAD (http://www.glad.org/)'s campaign to make the six states of New England a "marriage equality zone" by 2012.

Currently, only Massachusetts and Connecticut offer full marriage equality, with Vermont and New Hampshire following with civil unions, and Maine and Rhode Island bringing up the rear with various domestic partner benefits.

[As a bred, if not actually born, Mainer, I can tell you that it takes Maine a long time to do anything...it didn't even break away from Massachusets until 1820...but I digress.]

It's an ambitious plan, but then New Englanders are a breed apart...even the resident Republicans. It just might happen. :cool::weee::sing:

[pnggrad79]

If it takes Maine a long time to do anything, it takes an ETERNITY for Texas to do anything! There are people in some parts of Texas that actually think the Civil War is still raging. (As do some people in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, etc.) The old confederacy is reticent to change anything. We didn't become segregated until the 60's and in some places the 70's when the 13th Amendment was instituted in 1865 or 1866.

If it wasn't so bloody cold up in the NE, I think we would move there to enjoy the freedoms that now exist there. Here in TX, they deny there are any gay people anywhere in this state.

[christa08]

it takes an ETERNITY for Texas to do anything! Here in TX, they deny there are any gay people anywhere in this state.

This is so unbelievably true. I'm from Texas and you have it spot on. :(

[pnggrad79]

I wrote something to this effect a while back on SF when I said that New York had abolished slavery in 1827, and it took a damn Civil War and thousands dead and 40 years later for it to be abolished in the South. And it took another 100 years for the nation to actually give civil rights to African Americans. Still in some areas of the South, African Americans are not welcome and they know not to let the sun go down while they are still there. It is shameful and atrocious.

Remember James Byrd, Jr? In 1998, this black man was dragged by his ankles for 3 miles behind the truck of white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. He was killed simply because he was black.

The insidious nature of prejudice is like a cancer that serves as an undercurrent here in Texas and elsewhere. Freedom here comes at a price, slowly and sometimes painfully.