Out in California, gay-rights activists have proposed the Marriage Protection Act, which would outlaw divorce. It certainly makes a rhetorical point - similar to Jon Stewart (I think) who said that some conservatives are so enamored of marriage that they have completed three or more, start to finish!

Any takers for a similar campaign in Maine?

Portland resident Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature last night, for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The book tells the story of Colvin, a near-forgotten civil-rights heroine; Colvin was in the audience with Hoose at the awards ceremony in NY, and was "shaken with emotion as she joined Hoose on the stage," according to an AP report.

The National Catholic Reporter has a story about Pamela Starbird Beliveau of Lewiston, a lector and Eucharistic minister in her Catholic parish, who wrote an op-ed piece in the Sun Journal supporting same-sex marriage - and who very quickly received a letter from her parish priest saying she would no longer be allowed to lead worship services, specifically because of her pro-equality stance.

Last evening, after the historic day on which Governor John Baldacci became the first governor in the nation to sign into law a same-sex marriage act, there was a medium-sized gathering in Monument Square to celebrate. (It would have been bigger, we're sure, but the Maine Civil Liberties Union annual dinner was going on at exactly the same time up in Freeport.

I write today to commend the Portland Press Herald, for having the courage to deeply explore objections to same-sex marriage, and to report, even in an opinion piece, pitfalls that have come out of the national drive toward legalizing same-sex marriage.

MD Harmon's opinion piece today is masterful, commanding, and is a must-read piece of writing.