Marriage Equality is the law of the land in New Zealand.
For those looking for a blow-by-blow of the reading and the final vote, you can find that info: here.
In front of a packed public gallery 77 MPs voted in favour, and 44 voted against the bill this evening.
It didn't come without a
fight from the usual suspects.
The email circulated to MPs at the 11th hour thunders: "Come together, hold assembly, you shameless 77 - before you are driven out of office, before the burning anger of the voters overtake you, for the day of reckoning will come for sure, you hollow 77, whitewashed sepulchres."
Turns out that regressives just can't muster the support for "hatin' teh gayz" like they used to. One of my favorite quotes from the comments sums up the feelings here in NZ perfectly:
Complaining that someone else's marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a donut because you're on a diet.
Somewhere Bryan Fischer and Pat Robertson are retreating to their disaster bunkers as
Brian Brown cries it out on Maggie Gallagher's shoulder. I suppose I'd cry too if the entire world was turning against my twelfth-century ideology.
Greetings from Aotearoa, the most recent nesting place for equality.