New Hampshire House votes to retain equal marriage for gay couples
An attempt to overturn New Hampshire’s legislation to allow equal marriage has failed by 133 votes against equal marriage to 202 to retain equality for gay and straight couples.
New Hampshire’s equal marriage law has been under attack since it came into effect in 2010 and progress on a repeal bill was delayed from early last year to this month.
More than 125,000 people signed a petition to keep marriage equality on the books after a campaign was launched by an Iraq veteran who wished to be the best man at his gay brother’s wedding.
State Representative David Bates would like to see the equal marriage law revoked and the state revert to the civil unions law it had in place before it gave couples equal marriage rights. Gay marriages entered into before the law’s repeal would be unaffected.
Democratic Governor John Lynch had promised that he would veto any repeal bill which comes before him from the legislature.
If the bill had passed at the House of Representatives, in which the Republicans have a 74 percent majority, it would have gone to the state’s Senate where the party has 19 of the 24 seats. In order to override the Governor’s veto, there must be a majority of more than two-thirds in the chamber.
