CONCORD, N.H. — More than 200 people rallied Tuesday outside the Statehouse to repeal New Hampshire’s gay marriage law and replace it with civil unions for any unmarried adults, including relatives.

State Rep. David Bates, R-Windham, told the crowd there is no truth more self-evident under the federal Constitution than men and women were created for each other.

“Other arrangements are unnatural and incapable of sustaining the human species,” he said.

The rally was to support Bates’ bill to repeal the law. No date has been scheduled for a House vote.

Democratic Gov. John Lynch has repeatedly said he will veto attempts by the GOP-controlled Legislature to repeal the law, which he signed in 2009. New Hampshire enacted civil unions in 2007 for same-sex couples and two years later replaced that with the marriage law. Lynch also signed the civil unions law.

Supporters said the proposed repeal bill would not apply to gay marriages that have already occurred, but would stop new ones. Since 2010, 1,866 same-sex New Hampshire couples have married, according to the state division of vital records.

Repeal opponents say Bates’ bill has conflicting provisions that appear to bar the courts from recognizing same-sex relationships as valid, while declaring gay marriages that took place before the repeal took effect to remain valid.

Bates has said he is working on an amendment to clarify that and several other issues.

Republican House Speaker William O’Brien called the gay marriage law an attack on the family that must be reversed.

While O’Brien and others were speaking, Concord resident Marcia Blackman stood at the back of the crowd and yelled: “Why do you hate me? Why do you hate my family?”

O’Brien ignored the outburst and spoke louder into the microphone.

“We must vote to back marriage for our children,” he said.

The Rev. Bob Emrich, a Baptist pastor in Plymouth, Maine, who helped lead the last campaign to defeat gay marriage in Maine, told the crowd that voters in Maine had nullified a law passed by lawmakers and that New Hampshire residents could also.

“They told us it was a matter of civil rights. It is not. They said it is a matter of equality. It is not. It is about the definition of marriage. No one has a right to alter that,” he said.

 

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