Marriage Equality Marches On To It's 11th...and 12th State

Double vistories for marriage equality this week in Delaware and Minnesota. The "First State" is now the 11th in the country to ratify marriage equality and Minnesota is now on track to be the first non-coastal state to approve marriage equality by an act of the legislature (Iowa got it through the courts). It's a remarkable measure of progress since last November when 4 states voted on marriage equality and won.  As of this month, a full 25% of the 50 United States will have recognized marriage equality. And, note to conservative church and Republican types, this number is only increasing...Illinois is likely to be next.

There's a great article on Mother Jones' website today postulating that the surge in marriage equality could be directly related to the Mormon Church. Last year, the Church gave up it's well publicized and incredibly well funded crusade against gay marriage.  You'll recall the Mormons were crucial in defeating Proposition 8 in 2008 which set off the recent push for marriage equality across the country and at the federal level as well. Now that they are out of the fight, the Catholic church has been trying to pick up the slack but when they lost Maryland (a large Catholic state and originally a Catholic colony), the writing was on the wall. They can't fight this fight the way the Mormons can.

I'm glad that the Mormons cames to their senses and realized this was only hurting their image and, obviously, was not exactly in line with the phrase "what would Jesus do."  Jesus believed in love not hate and fear. If only the Catholic church would come to its senses on this issue too they could save themselves a lot of time, effort and money.