If any state would seem poised to approve gay marriage, it’s Rhode Island.
It has an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature, the nation’s first openly gay House speaker, a governor who strongly supports same-sex marriage, and two New England neighbors that allow gay couples to wed.
Instead, the state is expected this week to approve civil unions, effectively killing gay marriage legislation with an attempted compromise that has provoked strong opposition from both sides of the issue.
While New York injected new life into the gay rights movement Friday by approving same-sex marriage, Rhode Island’s torturous debate underscores the rocky path the issue has taken in New England, a historically liberal region some activists once believed would be a gay marriage bastion by 2012.
Four out of the six New England states allow gay marriage and two, Rhode Island and Maine, do not. And their prospects for approving same-sex marriage are not imminent.
Voters in Maine repealed their gay marriage law in a 2009 referendum, six months after it was signed by the governor, and gay rights activists are still plotting their next steps there. Rhode Island activists on both sides of the divide are fighting the civil union bill and believe gay marriage legislation may not be revived again until next year, at the earliest.
Hopes for passage were crushed in April when Gordon D. Fox, who came out as gay in 2004 and was elected speaker of the House last year, abruptly reversed course, stunning gay rights activists.
Although a supporter of same-sex marriage, he announced that he would back civil unions instead, arguing that marriage legislation was not worth a vote in the House because there was “no realistic chance’’ it would pass in the Senate.
“We were really blindsided by his decision,’’ said Karen L. Loewy, a lawyer at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, who called Fox’s reversal “incredibly unfair.’’
Gay marriage opponents are pleased, for the moment.
“I’m very hesitant to call it a victory, because we know there’s a lot of work to do and this is not the kind of thing we would celebrate and gloat over,’’ Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Providence Diocese said yesterday.
“I know this is a very difficult and sometimes painful issue for people who have same-sex attraction… . On the other hand, we will resist legislation that we think is improper or harmful to our culture or society.’’
A Public Policy Polling survey in February indicated that 50 percent of Rhode Islanders support gay marriage, while 41 percent oppose it. But lawmakers have turned back gay marriage bills since 1997, Loewy said.