CHANGE OF HABIT: Gay Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman to Lobby NH Lawmakers Against Marriage Equality Repeal!

Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman has published an op-ed in New Hampshire's Union Leader saying that he is in the state this week lobbying legislators to reject a bill that would repeal the state's marriage equality law, and that the state's motto 'Live Free or Die' applies to marriage equality.
Writes Mehlman:

Allowing New Hampshire citizens to marry the person they love isn’t just consistent with maximizing freedom. It also promotes responsibility, commitment and stability; it promotes family values. Again, our history provides a good road map: One of our party’s finest hours was the passage of welfare reform because it strengthened families and promoted marriage. Why would we want to take away this right from anyone?

New Hampshire’s civil marriage law protects religious freedom. No religious institution has to perform or recognize same-sex marriages. This is important because different religious traditions have different views on this question.

But despite these differences, so many of our faiths and traditions are rooted in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would want done to you. Isn’t allowing adults to marry the person they love consistent with the Golden Rule? If you were born gay (as I was), how would you feel if your state government took away this basic civil right that is available to all of your neighbors? How would you feel if you were a young person and were told by your state that the loving and stabilizing relationship you see in your mom and dad would never be available to you?

RANT: The Candidates Talk About The Gay Problem!

Last night's GOP debate on ABC was a thoroughly enjoyable bit of absurdist political theater -- unless you're LGBT, a peacenik, or else just not madly in love with Mitt Romney, in which case it was probably pretty dispiriting.

Think Progress has done us all the favor of compiling the candidates' statements on the LGBT communities into a single, easily digestible vid. The editing's a bit weird, but it's 
easy enough to catch the drift.

BURNED: Santorum Booed During Same-Sex Marriage Attack!

With Rick Santorum addressing a New Hampshire college crowd keen to know his views on same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana, it wasn't a question of if he would get booed, it was a question of how much. The answer is "lots." The candidate repeatedly compared gay marriage to polygamy during a testy back-and-forth, the New York Times reports.

"So anyone can marry anybody else?" he asked a student who said she believed everybody had the right to marry. "So if that’s the case, then everyone can marry several people. So you can be married to five people. Is that OK?" Santorum, asked whether he would allow state laws on gay marriage and medical marijuana to operate without federal interference, admitted: “I don’t know my medical marijuana laws very well," but called the drug a hazard to society. "I form that opinion from my own life experiences," he said. "I went to college, too." The boos and jeers were much louder than the applause as Santorum left for his next engagement.

RECRUITED: Democrats Should Write In Hillary in NH Primary!

It's time for Democrats to start a Draft Hillary campaign for the 2012 election, beginning with a write-in campaign in New Hampshire, write two Democratic pollsters on Politico. Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen called on President Obama to step aside last month, saying Clinton would make a far stronger candidate in 2012 and then president going forward. Now they are taking their Clinton push to the next level, asking Democrats "with resources and stature" to lead the write-in movement for the Jan. 10 primary. Since 1944, an incumbent president has had an approval rating below 49% only five times while attempting to get re-elected—and each time that president lost, they write. Obama currently has a 49% approval rating, the worst of any modern president at this point in his presidency.

Citing the repeated candidate surges in the GOP contest, Caddell and Schoen say that grass-roots efforts are driving the political process, making a grass-roots campaign more plausible than ever, especially in New Hampshire "where grass-roots politics predominates." "All that is needed is a spark on the dry tinder of political frustration and anxiety," they write. "A few Democratic patriots can provide the means to make it possible—and change the course of US history."

(Marriage News Watch): Stepping up the Assault on DOMA!

by Matt Baume
Marriage News Watch

We're counting down to the next ruling in the Prop 8 case. A Republican-backed bill in New Hampshire would replace marriage with civil unions for everyone -- including siblings. Get ready for a showdown on the Defense of Marriage Act, and things are heating up in Ohio.

SCARY: Rick Perry Bashes Gays, Applauds Efforts to Repeal Marriage Equality in New Hampshire!

At a Friday night event for Cornerstone Action, Rick Perry spoke out for opposite sex marriage and the repeal of equality in New Hampshire:
"As conservatives, we believe in the sanctity of life. We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. And I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father."

How Crazy is Perry?

PROGRESS: 50% of NH Residents 'Strongly Oppose' Repealing Marriage Equality Law!

New HAmpshire's same-sex marriage law, passed in 2009, will be on the agenda for discussion of repeal when Republicans convene in January, but a new poll shows little support from the general public for doing so, WMUR reports: The WMUR Granite State poll shows that only 27 percent of New Hampshire adults support repealing same-sex marriage, while 50 percent strongly oppose repeal. The percentages are similar to a poll asking the same question in February.

The poll of 500 randomly selected New Hampshire adults was conducted by phone from Sept. 26 through Oct. 2 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.

CIVIL but not EQUAL: NH House Panel Approves Bill to Repeal Same-Sex Marriage, but Allows for Civil Unions

A New Hampshire House Judiciary panel voted 3-1 today to amend and advance a bill that would have repealed same-sex marriage in the state, and barred civil unions, so it would allow for the latter, the Union Leader reports:

The original form of the bill would have banned both gay marriage and civil unions outright. The bill, HB 437, now allows both same-sex couples and heterosexual couples to form civil unions.

New Hampshire law allowing gay couples to marry took effect in January 2010. The bill preserves marriage for gays who have married under the current law. From the time it takes effect, marriage would be available only to men and women.

The bill allows a form of civil union that has never existed in the state, open to any two persons. It also contains language that allows any business, individual, school or association to refuse to recognize civil unions, exempting them from state laws that bar discrimination on housing, employment, contracts and grants.

The full House will not be able to vote on the bill until 2012, the paper reports.