Rhode Island: Governor Chafee pens op-ed in advance of signing marriage equality into law

In an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Why I Am Signing Marriage Equality Into Law,” Chafee goes beyond the usual “I believe in equality” argument to say that it’s an economic imperative to support marriage:

“Rhode Island was badly battered by the recession of 2008, but we are moving in the right direction,” Chafee argues. “Jobs are the only way forward — we need to keep the ones we have, and we need to create new ones.

"There are good signs — our unemployment rate has just undergone the largest yearly drop since 1985 — but one needless obstacle to our recovery remains. Rhode Island is part of a highly regional economy, with the other New England states and New York in constant competition with us for innovative companies, and particularly for the young, open-minded individuals who are close to the heartbeat of the new digital economy.

"In our small cluster of states, it is relatively easy for a company or a person to cross a border seeking a more favorable climate. And in recent years Rhode Island has been an outlier among our surrounding states: we are the only one prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying.”

Read the entire op-ed at NYTimes.com