Until 2004, gay couples couldn’t wed anywhere in the country. Now, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and most recently New Hampshire. Despite these historic strides by the gay marriage rights movement, though, the United States is still a nation divided over whether to redefine marriage. The California Supreme Court upheld the state’s voter-approved constitutional ban on gay marriage rights, but ruled that some the eighteen thousand gay couples who wed before Proposition eight took effect would still be married under state law. Twenty nine other states have created voter approved prohibitions blocking gay marriage in their state constitution as a way to keep state judges from overturning the bans. A majority of Americans still oppose full marriage rights for gay couples, however they still believe that gay marriage rights are necessary. The Northeast is growing as a stronghold of government recognition of gay relationships, with legal wedlock in five states including Vermont as of Sept. 1, 2009, and Maine as of Sept. 16, 2009, if the law is not suspended because of a voter movement to repeal it, and New Hampshire as of Jan. 1, 2010. In the same region, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey and the District of Columbia also offer legal alternatives known as civil unions and domestic partnerships. New York and Rhode Island recognize out-of-state marriages of gay partners. Still however, gay marriage rights are not clearly accepted nor defined everywhere.