Follow us
LGBTAmish.com
  • Home
  • Our Voices
    • Submit Here
  • News
  • Resources and Links
  • Contact

Rhode Island Becomes 10th State to Legalize Marriage Equality!

5/3/2013

1 Comment

 
On same-sex marriage, New England is now united.

Rhode Island became the 10th U.S. state and final one in the region to make gay weddings legal, after its House of Representatives passed a bill expanding marriage rights to homosexuals. Governor Lincoln Chafee, a 60-year-old independent, has pushed the change since taking office in 2011 and signed the bill yesterday, shortly after its approval.

“I am proud and humbled to make the Marriage Equality Act the law of the land in Rhode Island,” Chafee said in a statement. “We would not be where we are today without the Rhode Islanders who for decades have fought for tolerance and freedom over discrimination and division.”

Chafee backed the measure as a way to spur the state’s economy. Rhode Island’s law takes effect Aug. 1.

Along with the five other New England states -- Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut -- same-sex marriages also are legal in Washington, Iowa, New York, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Similar measures are pending in Delaware, Illinois and Minnesota.

The law will make Rhode Island “a place that is welcoming to the younger generation, the creative generation, entrepreneurs,” Chafee said in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York this week.

“New England is now complete,” Marc Solomon, national campaign director at Freedom to Marry, a New York-based group that helps and funds local gay-rights organizations, said by telephone. “We have an entire region of the country that has approved the freedom to marry.”

No Surprise Frank Schubert, national political director for the National Organization for Marriage, a Washington-based group that fights same-sex marriage legislation around the country, said the loss for his side wasn’t a surprise.

“It is a heavily Catholic state, which is what helped us hold same-sex marriage off for so long,” Schubert said by e- mail. “It is also one of the most Democratic states.”

Rhode Island’s House, led by Representative Gordon D. Fox, a Democrat and the country’s first openly gay House speaker, passed a same-sex marriage measure by 51 to 19 in January. On April 24, the Senate approved a modified version by 26 to 12 that expanded protections for religious organizations. That change was approved in yesterday’s 56-15 vote.

All five Republicans in the 38-member Senate endorsed the proposal, marking the first time that a state Republican legislative caucus has unanimously done so, they said.

Generational Shift “We recognize that there is a national consensus building on this generational issue, and we are glad that support for the freedom to marry is growing within the Republican Party,” the caucus said in a statement last week.

Two years ago, Rhode Island’s legislature pulled back a gay-marriage bill and instead approved civil unions. The state has granted fewer than 100 of them since, according to the Health Department. Rhode Islanders United for Marriage, a local gay-rights group, has said the low rate stems partly from the state’s proximity to others where gay marriage was already legal.

Last May, Chafee signed an executive order recognizing same-sex marriages performed out of state.

To contact the reporter on this story: Annie Linskey in Boston at alinskey@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net

1 Comment

Gay, Amish and on TV?

10/30/2012

1 Comment

 
LGBTAmish has been contacted by a television producer concerning a new documentary/reality series. We don't know many details but have been told that a series is being worked on and they are looking for former Amish cast members between the ages of 18 and 30. They are very interested in having a LGBT cast member, preferably still closeted. Fair warning: we find the idea of outing yourself  in front of  a nationwide audience a little troublesome.  But, If you fit the bill and are interested send an e-mail to our site and we'll get you in contact with the producer.
1 Comment

Growing up Gay and Amish

10/24/2012

1 Comment

 
James Schwartz was raised in an Amish community in Michigan. In a segment on HuffPost Live, he shared his struggle to fit into this group when he realized he was gay.

"If an Amish youth comes out to his parents and says 'I'm gay', then they really don't have any choice," he said. "They're going to have to leave. Unless they choose, of course, to stay in the closet."

James eventually made the decision to leave his first home. "Going to my first gay club, I sort of felt for the first time that sense of community, and others that were like me," he shared. "They really gave me the courage and strength to decide to live life for me instead of making a lot of other Amish people happy."

Schwartz joined host Nancy Redd to discuss growing up in homophobic communities along with Nate Phelps, LGBT and anti-abuse advocate and son of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, Bob Pardon, Executive Director of Meadowhaven, a long-term recovery center for survivors of high-control organizations, and Libby Jane, who grew up a member of the Vision Forum/Quiverfull movement.

Watch the full segment on HuffPost Live.

1 Comment

    Archives

    March 2017
    August 2015
    August 2014
    February 2014
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Amish
    Doma
    Gay
    Hate Crime
    Lgbt
    Television
    Youth

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.