New Hampshire Republicans vote to uphold same sex marriage

New Hampshire Republicans vote to uphold same sex marriage
AP/Jim Cole
New Hampshire Republicans vote to uphold same sex marriage
AP/Jim Cole

New Hampshire Republicans vote to uphold same sex marriage

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New Hampshire legislators debate a bill that would have repealed gay marriage in the state. The bill was defeated Wednesday.  (AP/Jim Cole)

Yesterday, the state of New Hampshire, which has been marrying same sex couples for two years, voted down an extraordinary attempt to repeal that law in its state house by a vote of 211 to 116.

That, in and of itself, is somewhat astonishing: The votes against the repeal almost doubled the votes for it.

But here’s the most spectacular part of this story: New Hampshire has a Republican majority in both state chambers. In the house, there’s a 189 vote Republican advantage. Gov. John Lynch is a Democrat who’d threatened to veto the repeal if it ever made it to his desk but the GOP, had it been willing, could have easily overriden it.

Instead, 118 Republicans — 118! — voted against the repeal. Let me make this as clear as possible: 118 Republicans voted to continue to allow the state of New Hampshire to marry same sex couples.

(And just for the record, the Dems weren’t 100 percent solid: Roger Berubé, a seven-term legislator from Strafford, was the sole Democrat to vote for repeal.)

New Hampshire was the first state in the Union to recognize same sex marriage on its own, without a court order or the threat of one. It’s now the first to affirm that right across party lines.