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Massachusetts Makes for a Great Pride MonthJun 15 '07 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line I知 proud to live in Massachusetts and I知 proud of what the Commonwealth has done to protect marriage equality and the rights of all of its citizens
This is probably the best Gay Pride Month Massachusetts has ever had (at least in the eyes of those who support equality). For three years Massachusetts has embarked upon an experiment of sorts – we were the first state to legalize gay marriage and since then, the opposing forces have been battling to both keep gay marriage legal and to outlaw it. A citizen initiated petition drive to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage was started soon after the court decision that legalized it. Here in Massachusetts for a petition like that, once it has been certified with enough signatures, it must be voted on by the entire legislature in two consecutive years and must be approved by at least a quarter of the entire legislature in each yearly vote to advance to the general ballot in the following election year. In our case last year during the annual Constitutional Convention, the amendment that would have stripped gays of the right to marry was passed by 62 legislators and so it advanced to a vote at the Constitutional Convention this year. It was crucial to defeat the amendment this year, otherwise it would have gone on the general ballot in 2008. Now I honestly think that in all likelihood in a general election here in Massachusetts that the amendment would have failed. I think it would have been close, but ultimately I don’t think the people of Massachusetts would decide to take rights away from a group. However saying that, no matter what the right seems to imply, voting on the rights of minorities is never fair. That was the message that the pro-marriage equality folks brought forth to the legislature. It also helped that the Governor, Deval Patrick, our House Speaker and the Senate President were all strongly supportive of marriage equality – all of whom lobbied long and hard to change the minds of various legislators so that the vote would take the amendment down. Not only that, thousands and thousands of citizens contacted their legislators (I know I did!) to voice their views and explain how marriage equality affected them. In the end, they are saying they didn’t really know what the final vote would be until minutes before it was taken. The Senate President opened the Constitutional Convention at 1pm on the 14th of June and by 1:07, the vote had been taken and the Constitutional Convention was closed. The final vote was 151 votes against the amendment and only 45 votes for it, five short of the 50 needed for it to advance to the general ballot. I only wish I could have been at the State House at the moment. The video of the legislators and marriage equality folks celebrating was amazing. Now I know that the anti-gay marriage folks are claiming that democracy has been subverted and all those other horrible things, but honestly, it hasn’t. We have the oldest Constitution in the country that was written by John Adams. That Constitution takes great pains to protect personal liberties and at the same time, makes it difficult to change the document willy nilly. The government that was set up by the Constitution is a representative government and in order to modify the constitution via a citizen petition, that petition must be approved by the legislature in two consecutive years. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that every petition gets a free ride through the Constitutional Convention and must be approved each time. Legislators are free to consider the amendment proposal and the wishes of the citizens they represent when it comes time to vote. If they think the amendment is mean-spirited, unfair or otherwise improper, they have every right to vote against it. That’s what happened today. The only right the anti-gay marriage folks have with their petition is that the Legislature considers it. That’s what they did – and they decided that it was unfair to vote on the rights of the minority. Now gay marriage is safe in the state until at least 2012, which would be the earliest another ballot question could be gotten on the ballot. However, the anti-gay marriage people would have to collect signatures again and the legislature would once again get to vote on the question. In the end if it got to a public vote, I think by 2012 people of Massachusetts will realize gay marriage hasn’t changed their way of life, hasn’t affected anyone’s heterosexual marriage, hasn’t led to the end of the world and in the end, people will reject banning gay marriage. Anyway, what would happen to the thousands of gay couples who were already married? I think to day there’s been over 8,000 gay marriages in Massachusetts – by 2012 I’m sure that number will be much larger. So I really think our right to marriage equality is safe here, but at the same time, I don’t think anyone should rest on their laurels since just about everywhere else in the country, those rights don’t exist (well, they don’t exist anywhere else unless you consider a civil union or a domestic partnership the same as marriage which most people don’t). At the Pride parade in Boston last week I had a feeling that something special was going to happen. The parade was bigger than it had been in a while and the overriding theme was the defeat of the constitutional amendment. Not only that, but there was the Governor walking at the head of the parade with a marriage equality sign. Everything was pushing for this and when it came down to the wire, the marriage equality forces were able to show why marriage equality is important and that is what led to the amendment’s defeat. In the end, I just know that I’m proud to live in Massachusetts and I’m proud of what the Commonwealth has done to protect marriage equality and the rights of its citizens. This review is part of the 2007 Gay Pride Month Write-Off. Help celebrate June as Gay Pride month and make your own submission to the write-off!  |
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