Overrides Governor’s Veto Of Funeral Rights For Unmarried Couples
Amazingly, while all of New England was moving toward marriage equality last year, Rhode Island – in large part thanks to their Republican and staunchly anti-marriage equality Governor Donald Carcieri – stayed the course and avoided the entire debate. Carcieri even coordinated efforts with the National Organization for Marriage (of which he is a member) in a newscast to express his opposition to marriage equality.
So it is especially heartening that Tuesday, the legislature overrode Governor Carcieri’s veto of a bill they passed extending funeral rights to unmarried couples. The law will include both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
The override vote was a huge win for equality, and slap in the Governor’s face, passing 67-3 in the House and 31-3 in the Senate.
Via the New York Times:
“Mark Goldberg, 49, pushed for the legislation after struggling for five weeks to claim the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, who committed suicide in October 2008. The state medical examiner would not release Hanby’s body to Goldberg because they were not married or relatives, even though the couple had wills and other legal documents attesting to their relationship.
”Not being able to claim his body was certainly something that was beyond belief, was beyond human compassion from anyone,” Goldberg said. ”There was just no compassion whatsoever from anyone in the state.”
Governor Carcieri was the 2009 keynote speaker of the annual banquet of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is opposed to any recognition of same-sex unions, including civil unions or domestic partnerships, and is vehemently opposed to gay marriage.
When Carcieri vetoed the bill, he stated, “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.”
The good people of Rhode Island deserve better. In fact, last year a Brown University poll found “most Rhode Island voters favor same-sex marriage by a margin of 60 percent to 31 percent… A larger majority, 75 percent, would support a law allowing civil unions for same-sex couples.”
It should be noted that Rhode Island is home to Bishop Thomas Tobin, who, we learned last year, told U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy, of JFK and RFK heritage, that he should no longer accept communion from his church, because of Kennedy’s stance as a U.S. Congressman on abortion. Rhode Island also is home to that Tim Horton’s franchisee who was co-sponsoring a NOM-sponsored anti-gay marriage rally in Providence.