Notaries will be standing by!
Portland City Hall will open at midnight to provide licenses. So will a neighboring town, Falmouth. Others including Bangor, Brunswick and Augusta will open later with special Saturday hours to issue marriage licenses.
Portland will have notaries for those who want marry immediately.
And they will have customers!
Chris Kast and Byron Bartlett... ((are)) planning to be among the first to get a marriage license when Maine's same-sex marriage law goes into effect at midnight... Kast and Bartlett... decided they would wed on the spot after getting their marriage license... At least one other couple, Donna Galluzzo and Lisa Gorney, planned a midnight wedding with all the trappings.
Actually this diary is mostly an excuse for me to include one of my favorite videos: Philip Spooner testifying for marriage equality before the Maine legislature in 2009.
"What do you think our our boys died for at Omaha Beach?"
Maine is about to become the eighth state and ninth US jurisdiction (Washington DC) to legalize same-sex marriage, having voted by a margin of 52.7% - 47.3% to legalize it by ballot initiative November 6th, 2012 -- three years after rejecting a similar piece of legislation by a margin of 52.9% - 47.1%.
Maryland, which also approved its marriage equality statute on election day, will have it come into effect January 1st, 2013, four days from now. Washington State's new law is already in effect.
Sometimes it seems like progress comes slowly, even if it looks inevitable. Three states and one country (Denmark) were added to the marriage equality column in 2012. In 2013, countries which potentially will enact same-sex marriage laws include Uruguay, France, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Plausible US states include Rhode Island, Delaware, Illinois and Hawaii, all by legislative action, and California by decision of the US Supreme Court.
There will be setbacks (as in North Carolina in May) and delays (as just happened in Uruguay, where action was postponed until April), and perhaps unforseen victories (if I had an example, it wouldn't be unforseen, right?). But for the moment
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE NEWLYWEDS-TO-BE IN MAINE!!
4:31 PM PT: Four hours and thirty minutes until pumpkin-ness hits Maine.
9:06 PM PT: Ding!!!!! Maine is now a marriage equality state!
Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 8:00 AM PT: The First Gay Couple Married In Maine, with Pictures