Is Massachusetts for Real?
On January 2, while the rest of the nation was watching coverage of
Gerald Ford’s funeral, the outgoing Massachusetts General Assembly decided
to move forward a "citizens petition" to ban gay marriage in the
Massachusetts Constitution, despite the fact that gay marriage has been
legal since May 2004 and over 8500 same sex couples have wed without
destroying straight families or causing Massachusetts itself to be
washed into the sea by a vengeful and angry God.
Yet, there’s
hope in this petition. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts told the
legislature it had a duty to vote on citizen petitions. In November,
the Massachusetts General Assembly simply adjourned a constitutional
convention without voting on the anti-gay measure. The rule on citizen
petitions is that only 25% of the legislature, sitting as a
constitutional convention, has to OK an initiative for it to pass. Out
of 200 legislators, only 62 voted for the anti-gay petition. That’s
only 31%!
The newly elected governor of Massaschusetts, Deval Patrick, had this to say about the vote:
"I am disappointed by today’s vote in the Constitutional Convention. We
have never used the initiative petition to limit individual freedoms
and personal privacy, but today’s vote was a regrettable step in that
direction.
"We have work to do over the next year to
turn this around. I am heartened by the fact that the overwhelming
majority of the members of the Legislature — a margin of over 2 to 1 —
voted to move on. I pledge to do what I can to build on that momentum,
so that our Constitution will continue to stand for liberty and
freedom, and not discrimination."
I cannot imagine
a day where Sonny Perdue or any elected Governor in Georgia would issue
such a statement. Here’s a man who was overwhelming elected to his
office, and he’s quite forcefully advocating that the amendment be
defeated, and not be put to a vote. Unlike Mitt Romney, who lead
rallies against gay marriage, and railed about how evil it was and how
it harmed children, Gov. Patrick personally petitioned lawmakers to
vote down the proposal, and seems to indicate he will continue to do so.
The
roll call is now a matter of public record, and the newly elected
Massachusetts General Assembly has a gain of 6 votes in favor of
keeping gay marriage. That means only 6-7 more votes are needed to
defeat the measure, and many think that those 6-7 votes can be found
before the issue arises again later this year.
The Boston Globe’s editorial board said it best:
"When
a final vote is taken by the new Legislature, the members must consider
whether this is an appropriate issue to put to the voters. We believe
Massachusetts voters would not take away this right, and a popular
endorsement might be considered healthy. But civil rights are
fundamental, and gay marriage should not be subject to plebiscite here,
any more than it would have been appropriate to have Alabama voters
directly decide school integration or Virginia voters decide
interracial marriage."
That’s the whole problem with the "let
people vote" mentality. Civil rights really shouldn’t be put to a
vote. You know that old time segregationists are kicking themselves
for not using this method to block those "uppity" blacks who had the
temerity to demand to be treated as equal citizens. Imagine what the
vote totals would have been all throughout the South in the 1950s and
1960s if segregation, interracial marriage, or school desegregation had
been put to a vote. What sense of decency stopped those bigots of the
mid-20th century from using the popular vote as a bludgeon? And more
importantly, what happened to it?
