By Bob Gaydos

This was supposed to be the week I talked to Ketchup Bob about his use of ketchup as a salad dressing. Never mind the health issues, it’s downright gauche. Didn’t happen.

When I got to Dunkin’ Donuts, he was finishing his toasted coconut donut. He seemed happy. “But,” he said, sensing my look of concern, “I had cereal for breakfast.” Genetically modified flakes of corn loaded with sugar. A kids’ cereal.

Before I could go all high and mighty about that (I‘m working on it), Guru Bob walked in and joined us. He opted for a bagon, egg and cheese sandwich. A Big Toastie, I think.

Sensing a theme and being outnumbered, I switched gears.

“Let’s talk about religion,” I said, looking for a less-controversial subject.

Well, I can’t really tell you much detail about what we talked about because I’m certain that something that was said, however innocently or non-judgmentally, would surely offend someone and I don’t want to lose any Facebook friends. I have made my political views well-known in this blog (Republicans have lost their minds and the Tea Party is brain dead), but I find most people can still act friendly towards me even if they think I’m an idiot, politically speaking.

Religion, though, hits people differently, I think. It goes to the core of a person, whether he believes in something or not, and why. Actually, non-believers I have found to be among the most avid, umm, believers, if you will. Atheists even have annual conventions to get together and reaffirm the fact that they don’t believe in anything but themselves. And now I’m certain I’ve offended some atheists, even though they don’t believe in organized religion. See what I mean?

I won’t speak for the other Bobs on this. They have their own beliefs and are perfectly capable of explaining them, if they so choose. What was interesting and encouraging about the discussion, though, was that it was honest and lively, included humor, went on for a while, included differences of opinion and the words “stupid“ and “hypocritical,” touched on Christianity in general, Catholicism in specific, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Islam, Unitarian Universalism, spirituality, the collective consciousness and The Course in Miracles.

That’s some heavy stuff on oatmeal and a veggie egg white sandwich.

The upshot was that we agreed if everyone just practiced what they preached in their personal faith and left others to do the same, the world we know would be a far more peaceful place. This is nothing new, of course, but somehow we humans can’t seem to get it right yet. For some people, it seems to me, not believing what they believe is a judgment of them, a negative one. It also seems to me that even people who don’t follow their proclaimed faith, or know much about it for that matter, can feel threatened when someone questions it.

Why should that be? It’s only a question. If one truly believes (again, only me), what’s the harm in listening and discussing. After all, none of us has the definitive answer on God, Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, etc. Not even the atheists, god bless them.

Anyway, the three of us Bobs managed to have an honest and challenging conversation about all this without getting insulted, angry, or frustrated, and we do not share identical views. We are friends, however, and we respect each other’s opinions. That means we can disagree without holding a resentment. There will be no smack down in the parking lot at DD.

In fact, we even talked about starting our own religion. (Hey, why not? I saw “The Master.”) Guru Bob would be Number One Bob, of course. Unless Ketchup Bob or I wanted to be boss for the day. We haven’t figured out the specifics yet, but it promises to be another interesting breakfast when we try. (I may get back to the ketchup, too.) Stay tuned.

For now, the only bit of inside information I’ll leave you on our discussion of religion is that I wouldn’t want to be part of any heaven that would have me as a member.

bob@zestoforange.com

By Emily Theroux

In the continuum between “fiscal cliff” brinksmanship and “right-to-work” trickery, I can’t decide whether to laugh, throw rocks, or avert my gaze in disgust from the spectacle of angry old white men, locked in a grudge match with President Obama and behaving churlishly.

The past week has been a mash-up of bad actors and worse theatrics. Which should we ring down the curtain on first?

The Speaker of the House resorts to high-risk stagecraft

John Boehner isn’t entirely sure who he’s representing in the fiscal cliff fiasco, but he’s certainly had to tiptoe through the muck left over after the Republican campaign splattered like an overripe tomato against the brick wall of the electorate. Republicans have no idea what they’re mutating into – since, at this early stage, it’s still bubbling up from the primordial ooze of spent teabags, long-form personhood certificates, forcible rape-rap, and amnesty antics into its own form of lame-duck lunacy.

Among Boehner’s recent one-liners:

• (Re: his fiscal cliff avoidance plan, which proposes cutting $600 billion in “entitlement” spending, partly by raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, but doesn’t raise the marginal tax rate on rich people; collecting $200 billion in revenues by closing unspecified income tax deductions and loopholes; then trimming billions more by slashing agency budgets, eliminating other mandatory programs, and reducing beneficiaries’ cost-of-living increases – all without offering specifics or even mentioning the payroll tax, unemployment, or the coming debt-ceiling debacle): “A credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House.”

• (Re: President Obama’s standing offer of generating $1.4 trillion in revenues (revised downward from an initial figure of $1.6 trillion in an attempt to appease Tea Party holdouts) by reinstating Clinton-era tax rates for the extremely wealthy; cutting entitlement spending by $400 billion; adding another $50 billion in stimulus spending; and requiring that Congress cede power over raising the debt limit to the executive branch): Obama’s “la-la land offer.”

Why is Speaker Boehner slow-walking an eventual deal with Democrats? The National Review’s Robert Costa said the House Weeper may be facing a leadership challenge from no-nonsense conservative Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, if Boehner colludes with moderates to achieve the dreaded “compromise.” Moreover, the GOP’s festering Tea Party flank isn’t in any hurry to cave in to raising their single-minded constituents’ taxes. Creative gerrymandering by Republican-controlled state legislatures may have put the kibosh on reaching common ground.

Worrying the bejesus out of small business owners (who fear losing customers to Medicare cuts) and the general public is the looming prospect of  economic collapse. The Congressional Budget Office warned in August that the fiscal cliff impasse, if not resolved by January (when the Bush tax cuts expire and the extreme “sequestration” budget cuts kick in), would hurtle the U.S. economy into another recession. As International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde cautioned Sunday, failure to reach “a comprehensive deal” before January will crash the fragile recovery, reverse recent gains in employment, and reduce growth to “zero.”

The House Speaker (who holds more power at this moment than anyone with his self-serving mindset, indecisive temperament, and appalling incompetence ever merited) dithers while America burns. Republican intransigence continues to edge us closer every day to plunging headlong into catastrophe. We can’t afford to play these dangerous games with the future of the U.S. economy so that Boehner and the House’s far-right cohort can “save face.”

John Boehner needs to stop worrying about saving his own job and focus on saving his country instead. He might go down in flames among the rabble-rousers in his own caucus, but he’ll also improve his chances of going down in history as a principled patriot rather than the worst Speaker the U.S. House of Representatives has ever had.

Krauthammer’s cruel logic: Right-to-work equals lower wages

Yesterday, Michigan’s lame-duck state legislature passed the Orwellian-sounding “right-to-work” law, which labeled union-busting “freedom of choice” while its proponents proclaimed it “pro-worker” and “pro-choice.” With a stroke of his pen, Governor Rick Snyder vanquished organized labor in the birthplace of the United Auto Workers union.

Right-to-work laws, as Ezra Klein explained in The Washington Post, don’t give you the right to work. “They give you the right to refuse to pay union dues when you work for a union shop, even though you get the wages the union bargained for, and the benefits the union bargained for, and the grievance process the union bargained for.”

If you live in Michigan and watch your salary and benefits steadily decline over the next several years, don’t ask Charles Krauthammer to cry for you.

During a Fox News “Special Report,” the insufferable Dr. K averred that successful American auto unions like the UAW resulted from a postwar “anomaly” that no longer exists in a globally competitive world.

“I sympathize with the unions, but the fact is that in a global economy, where you have to compete on wages and other elements of production, you can either have high wages with low employment, or you can, as Obama would say, ‘spread around the wealth’,” Krauthammer (who worked for years as a shrink!) said with sublime sensitivity, unable to resist a rapier-like pun. “In the right-to-work states, unemployment is 6.9 percent, and in the non-right-to-work states, it’s 8.7. So you can choose to have fewer workers who enjoy higher, inflated, unnatural wages, uncompetitive wages, or you can have competitive wages and more people employed, more people with the dignity of a job, and less unemployment and more taxation and more activity. I think it’s the right choice, but I understand how it’s a wrenching choice.”

Sorry, Charlie, but, as the wingnuts like to say, “That dog don’t hunt.” If CEOs and other company managers weren’t awarded salaries totally out of proportion to those earned by their employees, gazillion-dollar annual bonuses regardless of performance, corporate welfare, tax credits for outsourcing jobs, “golden parachutes,” and other incentives to gamble away corporate profits instead of reinvesting a portion of them in living wages, well-deserved benefits, and decent pension programs for their most valuable assets – the human kind – the economy wouldn’t be in this godawful mess.

If you have no heart, at least have the sense to keep your deficiencies to yourself!

Scalia compares ‘homosexual sodomy’ with murder

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has once again stepped in a steaming heap of controversy over a topic under consideration by the Court. During a nationwide book tour, Scalia brought up “having moral feelings against homosexuality,” only two days after the Court agreed to hear two cases challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

During a speech at Princeton University promoting his new book, Reading Law, Scalia responded to a question from a gay student about why his writings compare “laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder,” the Associated Press reported Monday. The justice opined that legislative bodies can prohibit acts they believe to be “immoral.”

If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have (them) against murder? Can we have (them) against other things?” Scalia wondered aloud. What, this caused me to marvel, should this man’s personal musings about morality have to do with interpreting the law?

The questioner, freshman Duncan Hosie of San Francisco, remained unconvinced by this outrageous line of chatter, even though the justice insisted “he (was) not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.” Hosie told the AP reporter that he believes Scalia’s writings tend to “dehumanize” gays.

Scalia should immediately recuse himself from deliberating on any case about which he has already publicly revealed his prejudices – something he apparently has no intention of doing, since blurting out two months ago at a similar event, held at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, “Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.” As far as Scalia, who calls himself a “textualist,” is concerned, if the Constitution didn’t ban the death penalty or preclude restrictions on abortion and sodomy, then neither should he.

As Michael Tomasky concluded in Time, “What blithering nonsense! … And Scalia is a bigot.”

By Michael Kaufman

A recent column in the Times Herald-Record took educators to task for allegedly using too much confusing jargon and too many unfamiliar acronyms befuddling to most other people. The writer, who covers education for the paper, cited “proficiency” as an example of confusing jargon. I don’t agree. I think most people know what proficiency means without having to turn to a dictionary. As for the acronyms, however, I concur, although her complaint applies to many fields of endeavor. It strikes me as a tad unfair to single out for criticism the beleaguered and too-often maligned people whose job is to oversee the education of children in our public schools.

Nevertheless, the column evoked more than a few memories that brought some smiles (and a scowl or two) to my face: I recalled the first meeting I attended after getting hired to write copy for a medical advertising agency. When they all started arguing about whether to use a “BRC” in a direct mail piece, I interrupted to ask what BRC stood for. …and was met by silence and bemused stares until someone finally explained that BRC is short for “business reply card.” Doh.

At another agency my first assignment was to work with a project manager who told me she needed a quick turnaround on some copy for a “chit card.” She was appalled when I asked her what a chit card is. I don’t remember the answer; only that it didn’t require  many words and she was happy with how it turned out. So if anyone reading this needs a quick turnaround on copy for a chit card…. I’m your man.

When I worked for a company that published news periodicals for medical professionals we had a “velox” machine that produced copies of photos and other illustrations. The “veloxes” were pasted with wax on to “boards” (actually cardboard sheets) along with the galleys of copy when the pages were laid out before being sent to the printer. (One time my assistant editor on Dermatology News put the boards on the radiator in our office and all of the veloxes and galleys peeled off. Another time he spilled his coffee on the boards.) In those days we would also talk a lot about PMS with the art director. (Not that PMS; this had to do with the color of ink used on pages that contained color.) We used a lot of PMS blue because that was what we used in the masthead (or maybe it was the flag) and it was cheaper to use the same color on other pages if they went on press on the same sheet.

We had a managing editor who liked to assert his authority by ordering us to add or delete hyphens willy-nilly (or is it willy nilly) even when our publications were in “blues” and making changes became more expensive so we were only supposed to make important ones. He ordered me to change a headline once when we were in blues: I had used the acronym EB instead of writing out Epideromolysis Bullosa above an article on the front page.  It was a one-column headline and the change would have meant cutting copy and remaking two pages because the story jumped to another page. But he insisted, “Nobody will know what EB means. They might think it means East Boston.”

I said dermatologists would know and even if someone didn’t they would soon find out because it was spelled out in the lead.”

“Change it.”

“Now, when we’re in blues? Why didn’t you ask for this before when you reviewed the Xeroxes of the pages?”

“Change it!”

“You’re a bully!” I said. When he didn’t blink I told him he was an AH and walked away.

You don’t have to be acronym proficient  to get the idea.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

I went out to buy some toys for Christmas and Hanukkah, determined to spend my money on gifts manufactured here in the United States. What better show of patriotism, of concern for the economy, of wishing to support up-against-it American workers during these wretched times?

I visited toy stores in New Paltz, Middletown and Warwick, plus a gift shop in Warwick with a large toy section. Conclusion: If you want to buy American be prepared to spend time searching for domestic toys and to pay a little more.

Here’s what you’re up against. Take a careful look at the fine print on the labels fastened to almost every toy you pick up and you find the inevitable “Made in China” or to lesser degrees “Made in Thailand,” “Made in Vietnam,” and made in scores of other places. It seems that the toys we give our children are manufactured just about everywhere except where they live. There are exceptions of course, but China for the most part seems to rule the American toy trade.

I came across a Disneyfied stuffed Winnie the Pooh doll; made in China. A Fisher Price musical gym; made in China. I found something called the “original” Rubber Duck. It was made in Spain. There was an erector set manufactured in China for a French firm. A line of toys connected with Thomas the talking locomotive, some Crayola products, and Legos are all made in China. So is an American flag. I came across Warwick t-shirts made in Honduras and Haiti.

I saw a Monopoly set that was made here but with dice and player tokens manufactured overseas, and I found a jigsaw puzzle map of the United States and Canada that was made in Germany.

Of course, not everything is imported. Here’s a selection of some American-made toys I came across in short visits to the toy stores and gift shop.

Newhard’s in Warwick, Enchanted Toys in New Paltz, and the Toy Chest in Warwick carry the Green Toys line, which is based in Mill Valley, Calif. This is a collection of fire trucks, dump trucks, flatbed trucks and tugboats, all big and colorful, and made of recycled materials (mostly used milk jugs). Not only are these trucks eco-friendly, but a sales person told me they’re virtually indestructible.

The Toy Chest carries basic musical instruments (triangle, ocarina, drums, rhythm sticks, etc.) made by an outfit called First Note of Kirkland, Wash.

Newhard’s sells several items made in this country. These include several solid wooden pull toys manufactured by Mapleland in Middlebury, Vt., plus attractively packaged sets of blocks made by Uncle Goose of Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Toys R Us store in Middletown was awash in foreign made toys and games thought it also had a large selection of jigsaw puzzles made in the United States.

Sales people in the three smaller stores agreed that price is the major factor in their stocking mostly foreign-made toys, which generally are cheaper than domestic products. For example, an amusing solid maple giraffe on wheels made in the United States was available for $35, a stiff price for what is essentially a pull toy.

But in fact, American-made toys are not always more expensive. For example, for $27.95 you can buy Dado Cubes (a colorful building block set that seems to defy gravity) made here in the U.S.A., or for $32.95 you can buy Arx, (a colorful building block set that seems to defy gravity) made in China.

Additionally, the sales people at the three smaller stores said the reason you don’t encounter many American made toys is because they’re difficult to find. However, a number of internet sites focus on such products. Two such sources are madeinusaforever.com and fatbraintoys.com.

What has been your experience in shopping for holiday toys and games?

Daphne

By Carrie Jacobson

It was warm enough today, and bug-free enough, that we left the back door open so the dogs could go in and out at will, for the first time in their lives.

Clearly, it was liberation for them, and they spent hours running in and out – just because they could. Then Smokey sat in the sun in the open doorway, while Jojo lay in the sun in the yard, and we all soaked it up like the miracle it was.

Earlier in the day, when the door had still been closed, I’d heard the dogs doing something, again and again, making some metal on metal noise. I looked out of the open door of the boat-garage studio where I was painting, and though I couldn’t see what they were doing, I thought it might have something to do with the gates, and a potential escape, so I took them inside.

When I came back out, I heard the noise again, and realized where it was coming from – the rusty 40-foot-tall antenna that the previous owner installed, and which towers frighteningly over our house. It’s footed in a block of cement, and probably is stable, but still, it looks terrible, and if it ever toppled, would cause all sorts of trouble.

The noise, I realized, was caused by a bird, probably a crow, tossing pecans down inside the antenna, probably in an effort to break them.

Or maybe, just maybe, he did it just because he could.

By Jeffrey Page

I sit on a small footstool and gaze into her perfect little face as she rocks to and fro in a small indoor swing. She makes a little sound that reminds me of a sigh. I tell myself she’s content, at peace. I’m mesmerized – and can’t recall the last time I used that word – as I watch her eyes move right, left, and up and down, taking everything in, seeming to want to know things, to know everything.

Sometimes, when she’s in the crib, she does a baby thing; shakes her arms and flails her legs, and looks like a little bird about to take off. And I am delighted. But now she just gazes at anything that catches her fancy. She is 4 months old.

As I watch her take in a little of the world, I think of her mother when she was 7 asking me to take her to see “Annie” and my successful resistance. Now, so many years later, I wish I could live it again, pick up the phone, and buy the best seats in the house. Can’t be done, so I make a quiet oath that can be heard only by God, the baby and myself: If this granddaughter should ask for something that doesn’t interest me, I shall comply. Such compliance, I think, is listed among the requisites for good grandfatherhood, which I will strive to practice. Even if in seven years or so she asks me to take her to a revival of “Annie.”

Grandchildren are a second chance to get things right.

The little girl before me stops her bird imitation and her hands fall into her lap. She cries. Not the loudest, but with just enough gusto to capture your attention. Diaper? Hunger? A need to burp? Maybe boredom and a wish for a little walk around the house while being bounced slightly in my arms. I know she likes that. But then I notice that the pacifier she was happily sucking a second ago has fallen out of her mouth. I put it back, she gets to work.

Sitting here in front of her, I move a little to my right and she follows me with her dark blue eyes. Wait, did she just do what I thought she did? Was that recognition of me or just an awareness of movement? Of course I now move to my left, back to the first position, and she follows me again. I bend down and kiss her cheek, which, I’ve been surprised to discover, is not smooth as silk, but far smoother than mere silk. In mid-kiss, I’m aware of that sweet baby smell.

The indisputable truth, I tell her, is that she’s beautiful, that she’s cute, that she is a miracle, that I can’t wait until she speaks so we can talk about stuff or maybe just take in a matinee of “Annie.”

I tell her, “I want to hear what you have to say because, clearly, you are one smart little kid.” I make a funny face, and – the grandfather’s reward – she smiles and kicks the air.

People seem to get a little gaga over grandchildren. I try not to. Did you ever listen to otherwise serious people speak to a baby in that happy, squeaky little voice adults reserve for infants? Before she was born, I swore I would never do that, that I would take her more seriously than that. The funny thing is that when I tell her how smart and how beautiful she is, I do it in that happy, squeaky little voice adults reserve for infants.

Then I get my voice back, pick her up, and walk around the living room like a sergeant-major on parade and singing “The Grand Old Duke of York” with accompanying bounces. She likes that. She gives me another smile when I get to the line about the Duke’s 10,000 men being neither up nor down. Then I sing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” She likes that, too.

I think it was my daughter who first noticed that adults seem to say everything twice when it comes to talking to a baby. I knew I would never fall for that sort of nonsense, and had you been there, you would have heard me say in a deliberately raspy, allegedly funny tone, “You are a very special little girl; yes you are, and I love you.” And had you stayed another six seconds you would have heard me follow that with “You are a very special little girl; yes you are, and I love you.” Maybe I’m just a little gaga.

I put her back in the swing and give it a gentle push. In a minute or so, I see her eyes close, and then she’s fast asleep. I sit here on the footstool watching her go back and forth, watching her little right hand resting on her left wrist. I rub the back of my index finger gently across her cheek. I kiss her head.

She is magic. Her presence in a room improves the room. Her very existence improves the world. Other grandfathers say the same thing about their children’s children. And you know? They’re right, too.

By Bob Gaydos

I don’t eat salt and sugar anymore. Well, I try not to, as much as is possible in America. Also no red meat, French fries or soda. I know, downright un-American.

As I write this, I‘m sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts alone, eating my oatmeal with fruit (fair) and veggie egg white (pretty good) breakfast. Medium coffee, no sugar. Ketchup Bob, who usually joins me, had a previous engagement. We’ll have to talk about that ketchup some other time.

The low-salt/sugar diet started about four months ago, the result of a long-delayed physical checkup and a decision that I wasn‘t ready for the slow-but-steady surrender to couch potato oblivion. Not by a long shot, it turns out to my pleasant surprise.

The doctor said I was too heavy and my blood pressure was too high. Vitamin D was too low. A couple of pills, some exercise and a new diet were prescribed. The pills have the blood pressure down to my former well-within-acceptable range and I have lost about 30 pounds (more to come). I am also walking two-to-three miles per week and have started what I call an exercise regimen, but my coach calls a reclamation project. I say it’s just semantics, but we’re working on it.

It turns out, the diet switch wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. There’s a lot of salad in my diet now, more fruit and veggies and a lot of chicken. Also sea food. I have ventured into the previously mysterious world (to me) of vegan cuisine and have eaten sushi for the first time. More to the point, I’m prepared to go back for seconds. I have also relearned the art of using chopsticks (brown rice, please).

I am also happy to report that there are mighty tasty organic cookies (double chocolate) and that chocolate itself, if it’s mostly chocolate, is still good as well as good for you. And there are plenty of healthful salsa and chip varieties to satisfy that other craving. And Greek yogurt with fruit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not nearly settled in to this new diet. Not even sure what it will eventually turn out to be. I may splurge on an occasional steak or ice cream cone. Fanaticism is not one of my shortcomings. The doctor asked me to read “Wheat Belly,” a best-seller that launched the no-gluten craze. I’m not even sure I had a wheat belly, but I’m reading the book and I’ll have to get back to you on that. At the very least, I know that too much bread isn’t good for me.

The exercise regimen, on the other hand, has turned out to be more challenging. Even walking a half mile was exhausting initially.

Weight training (dumbbells, not barbells) was, to be honest, humbling at first. My male ego had to wrestle with seeing the fairer sex easily do repetitions I could not finish. Pushups? Forget it. The only exercise I managed to feel OK doing at first was crunches. (And by the way, they’re paying off.) I’m also doing a lot of stretching and believe me my body needed it and I feel it.

I am happy to report that I am now doing a two-mile walk each week, with a one-mile stroll tossed in most weeks as well. There are also sessions on a stationary bike (soon to be increased, coach) and a general heightened awareness of how I walk (also tossed in for the coach).

So what? you say. Why should you care about what I eat or do with my body? Well, honestly, you don’t have to care. I’m doing this diary entry as a sort of selfish exercise in self-discipline, to remind myself that what I’m doing is working. I feel much healthier, look much healthier and even think in a healthier way than I did before I began this radical change. That’s win-win-win. I’ve had to buy new jeans and they are already too big.

It has always been my belief that it is never too late to do something if you really want to do it. Motivation is key, of course. As well as self-discipline and support and encouragement. Making this change a matter of public record also has the effect of making me stick to it as much as possible because I won’t like being asked whatever happened to your diet, chubby?

And, who knows, maybe it will influence someone else who is slipping into coach potato oblivion to resist and pull him or herself out of the cushions. Life is too short to fritter away. I have a long way to go, but the joy, they say, is in the journey. So I’m going to try to have fun as I go along. (More stretches? Really coach?) I’ll keep you filled in on the details.

Next week, Bob, the ketchup talk.

bob@zestoforange.com

By Jean Webster

It’s official. Same-sex marriage is legal in the state of Maine, but may face a challenge.

Just four weeks after a majority of Mainers – 54 percent, in fact – voted in favor of same-sex marriage, the referendum has been certified by Governor Paul LePage. Gay couples in Maine can set their wedding dates, though they must wait until the end of the month, when the law goes into effect.

Maine joins eight other states – Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia – in agreeing that gay people have the right to marry. But Maine went one better. It is the first state to approve gay marriage by popular vote. Gay rights activists call it an important step forward.

Prospective couples are rejoicing over the vote and the governor’s swift signing it into law. However, there is still a strong movement in Maine – and throughout the country – to overturn these rights by giving opponents of gay marriage another chance at the ballot box.

For years, many Mainers have supported the rights of gays and lesbians, including their right to marry. In fact, in May of 2009, Governor John Baldacci signed a bill in favor of gay marriage that came through legislative approval. At the same time, the opposition rallied enough signatures to put a referendum on the 2009 ballot, and gay marriage was rejected by voters in a “people’s veto.” If not for that referendum, Maine would have been the first state to legalize same sex marriage through legislative process and a governor’s signature.

That referendum was brought about, and eventually succeeded, through the work of the National Organization for Marriage, the leading opposition group to gay marriage in the United States, along with various religious and family watch groups. Funds in the millions of dollars came into the state from near and far to support the veto resolution.

And, NOM is already rallying its troops to overturn this year’s vote, just as it did in 2009.

According to Justin Alfond, Portland’s State Senator, there is nothing to stop these groups from doing it again. The law does not restrict what can be put to a vote. But Alfond admits it would be more difficult for NOM this time.

“Taking away rights is a much bigger chore than maintaining the status quo,” he said. Also, if the anti-gay marriage groups hope to get on the next ballot, they’d have to collect more than 57,000 names by Jan. 24, 2013.

There is no doubt in my mind that the foes of same-sex marriage are already gathering funds and signatures to get this new law annulled. The cry through much of the country is that marriage should be between a man and a woman, as it states in the Bible. Opponents of gay marriage have come to call heterosexual marriage “a building block of society.”

These opponents say they aren’t attacking the gay lifestyle. They just want to preserve traditional marriage. (If the divorce rate teaches us anything, it is that traditional marriage is pretty shaky.)

Others believe that the marriage of two men or two women endangers the marriages of the rest of us. (I haven’t figured that one out yet.)

Throughout the campaign the hue and cry in television ads claimed that gay teachers would teach their students about the gay and lesbian lifestyle.

In spite of the slim possibility that the new law could be rejected, gay couples are already seeking wedding locations so they can plan their weddings as soon as the new law takes effect, on Dec. 29. Because that’s a Saturday, some towns are considering whether to keep their municipal buildings open to accommodate gay couples.

Portland Mayor Michael Brennan would like his city to hold the first same-sex ceremony, but he says that whenever it happens “I want to be there.”