Miss California might have joined “the storm” against gay marriage, but in New Hampshire it appears that there isn’t a drop of rain. Fresh on the heels of Iowa, the New Hampshire State Senate passed a bill on Wednesday making gay marriage legal:

Even though the marriage equality bill had been rejected by a key legislative committee, Ray Buckley, the out gay chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, spent the day April 28 “whipping” support for both that measure and a transgender rights bill. NowHampshire.com reported that Buckley was pulling out all the stops, meeting with the Senate Democratic leadership in what proved to be a successful effort to bring the marriage bill over the top in the April 29 vote. The House of Representatives passed the marriage measure in March. Some opponents of the transgender rights bill have derided it as a “bathroom bill.”

The historic move makes New Hampshire the fifth state to let gays and lesbians marry. Wow, we’ve now got New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and even Iowa, and my beloved California can’t get it together. Pretty sad.

The bill still needs to be signed into law by NH Governor John Lynch, a Democrat, who has expressed in the past that he believed that the word “marriage” be limited to unions between partners of the opposite sex.

UPDATE:
But wait, that’s not all. Maine passed a similar bill late this afternoon! This one also needs to get past the governor, but that’s two states in one week!

Via / Gay City News