Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Yes!

Today the DC City Council took the first of two votes to decide whether to pass legislation to allow for gay marriage in the District of Columbia. I'd written a post in October about my disappointment that the Council Member who represents the ward where we live was in opposition to the bill before it was even presented. I even included a bit of the e-mail exchange I'd had with him back then trying to get him to consider being a co-sponsor of the bill at that time. He did not ultimately sign on as a co-sponsor in October and I felt bad, but since such a majority was in favor of the bill, in a way his vote wasn't important. But to me it was. He knew me and my family and maybe I took it a little personally.

So as I watched the hearing live online this morning, I actually started to cry when he began speaking because he was explaining that after a lot of deliberation, he'd changed his mind! He actually voted "YES" today! I got Su on the phone once I realized that he was providing a rationale for voting "yes" and so we both heard him vote "AYE".

I am so happy! I know that he's going to get a lot of pushback from some of his constituents, but his remarks regarding discrimination were excellent. I'm sure they will be published later but for now all I remember is that he said he could not vote to discriminate against people.

I just wrote him a note to thank him. I had not idea that he was going to vote "yes". What a wonderful thing it was to see and hear! The measure passed today by a vote of 11 "yes" votes to 2 "no" votes. -Monica

P.S. After the final vote around Dec. 15th, the mayor has already said he will sign it and then it will go to congress for a 30 day reveiw before becoming law (if congress doesn't do anything to stop it). Wow!

3 comments:

Jenni said...

wonderful!

Carrie said...

Harry Thomas is my Council Member too, and I was so happy that he voted Yes today. Yay!

Casey said...

What great news! I'm glad you gave him a piece of your mind and helped him see how things really should be.