Blake Oshiro, deputy chief of staff for
Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, reflected Thursday on the state's
path to marriage equality.
Oshiro played a critical role in this
week's passage of a gay marriage bill.
(Related: Hawaii
governor signs gay marriage law; Takes effect Dec. 2.)
As House majority leader in 2011,
Oshiro shepherded a civil unions law through the chamber.
As a member of the Abercrombie
administration, Oshiro drafted Hawaii's marriage law.
During a local television appearance,
Oshiro said that he was confident Hawaiians had progressed on the
issue.
“I do think that as people start
seeing their neighbors, people in their classrooms and their
workplace, people that are just next to them in same-sex
relationships, they start realizing that it doesn't affect them in
terms of how they live their lives,” Oshiro said. “And so then a
comfortability really comes around. What you really see now is a lot
more LGBT people coming out. So, once you start realizing your
neighbor or your friend or your relative is actually an LGBT person,
then an acceptance comes along as well.”
Oshiro added: “What you will see next
is a lot of states that have an outright prohibition on same-gender
couples and those constitutional amendments that are explicitly
prohibitions will have to be repealed first. And then you can have
states actually enact the same-sex marriage law. So, it's going to
be a two-step process. Once you see some of those momentums start
happening, then you'll start seeing a shift in terms of the amount of
population in the nation that actually will have same-sex marriage.”
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