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The
Boston
Globe
New
Hampshire quietly ushers in CU
Celebrations planned
as clock hits midnight
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Les Schoof (left) and Rep. Edward Butler, partners
nearly 30 years, plan to enter a civil union.
(Geoff Forester for the Boston Globe) |
By Stephanie Ebbert,
boston.com on the Web, December 31, 2007
When gay marriage came to
Massachusetts, throngs of people filled the streets in Cambridge, applauding the
same-sex couples emerging from City Hall with their first-in-the-nation marriage
licenses.
That is not exactly the plan in New Hampshire. A more subdued celebration
is expected after the clock hits midnight tonight, when civil unions become
legal in the Granite State. Twenty or so couples, who had to register
beforehand, will gather outside the State House for ceremonies in which they
will be united with their partners in a manageable, personable celebration.
"It's a much more scaled-down and smaller version, more intimate, meaningful,"
said Jen Major, who helped organize the event and will be united with her
partner, Kelley Morris, that morning.
Of course, it was a major development when gay marriage came to Massachusetts
nearly four years ago. In Cambridge, 227 gay couples applied to marry on
the first night they had the opportunity, and 6,121 couples statewide wed that
first year.
In all of New Hampshire, just 109 couples have registered their intentions to
unite so far. Some of them may do so on New Year's Day at the South Church
Unitarian Universalist Church in Portsmouth, where a family-friendly celebration
is planned with a potluck lunch, songs, and worship scheduled, and ministers on
hand for impromptu civil unions.
If both the hoopla and the backlash seem unnaturally muted for a state that was
just the fourth in the nation to adopt civil unions, perhaps that has something
to do with the psyche of New Hampshire residents. The libertarian-minded
citizens of the "Live Free or Die" state simply cannot be bothered all that much
about it.
"The biggest issue is that it's just not an issue," said Andrew E. Smith,
director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, who pointed to the
state's low levels of church membership and ethnic groups that object to
same-sex unions. Since 2003, he has been polling New Hampshire residents
on the same question -- whether they would support or oppose a law granting
civil marriage licenses. A slight majority has supported it since, inching
up from 54 percent in 2003 to 58 percent this year. And the issue has
barely registered in the runup to the presidential primary in New Hampshire,
where less than 1 percent cite gay marriage as the most important issue
confronting candidates, said Smith.
New Hampshire voters might have been more vocal on the issue, Smith said, had
civil unions been ordered by the court. In Massachusetts, gay marriage
opponents long objected that they and their elected officials had no vote in the
matter.
But Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state Republican party, said New Hampshire
voters were not giving that mandate when they handed Democrats control of the
House, Senate, and governor's office in 2006.
"This is not something that people expected when they got a Democratic
Legislature here," he said. "This had not been a campaign issue here in
2006. Democrats found themselves with a majority unexpectedly and decided
to use it."
New Hampshire was only the second state in the nation to allow civil unions
without a court order but it trails its New England neighbors, where same-sex
unions are becoming unremarkable. Vermont allowed them as far back as
2000. Connecticut became the first to do so without a court order in 2005.
Rhode Island couples can marry in Massachusetts though their union is not
recognized in their home state. (New Jersey also allows same-sex civil
unions and California offers domestic partnerships, which become legal in Oregon
on New Year's Day.)
Civil unions will give same-sex couples most of the same rights as heterosexual
married couples -- property rights, shared wills, and hospital visitations.
To be united, participants must be 18, unrelated, unmarried, and not engaged in
another civil union.
While gay couples are thrilled by the newfound recognition, the celebrations
over New Hampshire's civil unions have been tempered by the fact that they are
not quite marriages.
"It's a really complicated experience," said state Representative Edward Butler,
a Democrat from Hart's Location planning his ceremony on his 30th anniversary in
April. "We've had a 10th anniversary, [a] 25th anniversary party, but
we've never had a celebration and a ceremony in the way that we will [with] a
civil union ceremony. But it's not equality. It's not marriage.
Even more important to us than the word is the reality of equality. It's
still a significant distance from that."
Butler is a justice of the peace who will perform ceremonies for other gay
couples beginning New Year's Eve with a ceremony at his inn, Notchland Inn.
He and his partner, Les Schoof, were among the couples who sued Massachusetts
for the right to marry here, though their union would not be legal at home.
They lost that bid two years ago.
Now, New Hampshire will recognize gay couples married in Massachusetts, though
only as civil unions. State Representative Maureen Mooney, a Merrimack
Republican, has introduced a bill that would eliminate that recognition for
out-of-state couples, but she is considering withdrawing it or changing the
language.
"Let's face it, it's our law now," she said. "I have a feeling that Jan. 1
is going to come and we're going to proceed as we've always proceeded as a state
-- except there is a new job for the secretary of state now."
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at
ebbert@globe.com.
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