The Daily Parker

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Where's Rhode Island?

I wrote yesterday about all of New England (except that one little bit in the southeast) has now ratified marriage equality. I asked some friends, why not Rhode Island? Reader EC wrote back from East Greenwich:

eventually they'll pass it. We have a Republican gov and he's trying to posture, but maybe even more significant is the fact that Rhode Islanders never rush into anything. We were the first to enter into the revolutionary fray with the burning of the British ship, the Gaspe, but the last of the colonies to ratify the Constitution. It has been thus ever since. To paraphrase, the mills of RI governance grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine. All in due time. We tend to fight for the underdog tooth and nail, but hesitate to legislate. Instead we spend years fighting about changing our state name, officially The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, to eliminate the potentially "racist" word, plantations. On second thought, maybe that's why we hesitate to legislate.

It'll be interested to see what they do. I haven't heard of any court challenges there, either. As for other states, via Andrew Sullivan comes Nate Silver's update on New York. Astute geographers will note that New York borders four of the six states in New England, and is (at least below I-84) a fairly left-leaning state.

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