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A joint session of the Massachusetts state legislature delivered a resounding defeat today to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. By a staggering 157-39 vote, lawmakers killed an amendment that had won a healthy majority of support just one year earlier.
The GLBT community owes a great deal of gratitude to Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, MassEquality and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. They persuaded foes and solidified the support of friends. This victory, following the legislative vote in California, gives an incredible amount of momentum to marriage rights in America. It appears, for the first time, that the pendulum has swung in our direction. There is a long, brutal road ahead, but the good guys and gals are finally winning.
9 Comments:
Bring out Freddy Mercury...."We are the chamions, my friend."
posted by Anonymous, at
9/14/2005 9:33 PM
As excited as I was about all this, particulary as a Massachusetts citizen, it also leaves it open for yet another amendment that defines marriage entirely as a 'man and a woman', whereas the one defeated today, would have made all the marriages into civil unions. We take the victory today, but still have a long road ahead.
posted by Anonymous, at
9/14/2005 9:40 PM
Your caution is understandable, but now that the public and lawmakers have seen that a year plus of gay marriage in MA hasnt caused the Universe to implode nor the liberal northeast to sink under the waves like Atlantis; they will become more and more used to and comfortable with the reality of it and realize that it's not such a big deal after all. Which of course it really isnt. Have faith that progress in this area will be s l o w but steady! Gary (NJ)
posted by Anonymous, at
9/14/2005 10:50 PM
Gary, I totally agree. This is indeed a milestone and a great one at that. However, our brothers and sisters in Massachusetts, though they enjoy the right to marry, they are for now living in marital limbo. They can't file joint federal tax returns and their marriages are null and void in the rest of the country. What is equally repugnant is that there is provision in that state's marriage laws that permit registrars to refuse to marry same-sex couples based on one's religious beliefs, whereas it doesn't apply to heterosexual marriages so there is still no full inclusion not just yet or maybe for a long time to come, but at least this is a start, hopefully. I think a registrar's religious beliefs should not be exempt and they should be fired for blatant discrimination. Its the same I believe in Canada and elsewhere in Europe where civil unions are mostly the norm. Indeed there is still much more work to be done and we can't be complacent. It is not going to be easy and we must be vigilant. Even in many of those states that have passed an amendment to ban same-sex marriage, its going to be a long long battle to get that reversed. So for now we'll probably end up with several states hopefully permitting same sex marriages with perhaps one or two limitations and a lot more states refusing to recognizes those marriages. It could well split society into two very separate societies if those bans aren't overturned. My own theory is that if all 50 states had had civil unions in place a year or two ago, it probably would have been far easier to eventually convert all of them to be recognized as marriages with all the rights and privileges that are inherent therein. In those countries in Europe were civil unions are the law, some argue that gays are still second class citizens, maybe so for now, but that too is a huge step forward and I won't be surprised if they too eventually convert into full marriage recognition since all of them virtually grant almost all of of the rights and privileges of marriage. Its certainly better than nothing for now since we in the US have nothing quite like that in the remaining 48 or 47 states even though we all want and deserve fully inclusive marriage laws on the books. So let's be hopeful that society will do the right thing and recognize that we too deserve to be fully inclusive as a matter of common decency in what is supposed to be a democracy.
You are correct Robert. I have worked closely with Marriage Equality CA and met with Mark Leno personally in our strategy meetings in Los Angeles.
The Constitution guaranteed the freedom to marry from the beginning. These newly created amendments are contrary to the intent of it for ALL people, particularly where no one else is affected by the inclusion of gays and lesbians into it's protections. Having said that: this social experiment, whether in MA or Canada or Spain...has been a success. But to read or hear the more conservative view, they completely misrepresent these results. Take Scandinavia. A study on family and marriage trends was taken in Sweden and Norway.
The lifting of certain bans on gay couples and laws that supported their relationships were implemented. Yet, a study of the effect of these laws was skewed to show a lack of popularity among the entire populations. What the study DIDN'T say and what is the REAL effect is social programs on marriage. For many years, welfare, tax funded and commonplace child care centers or parental stipends for childcare have taken the role of financial support and custodial parenting away from spouses and into the hands of government. It's THIS trend that's made marriage UNNECESSARY, NOT homosexual inclusion in it. As for the popularity of marriage among gays and lesbians, reportage fails to inform that many people tend to not want what they can't have. Marriage is STILL very complicated for couples, even where it's legal, such as in MA-and creating excruciatingly difficult processess and patchwork differences from state to state are a calculation. To make it all so difficult, no gay person would want to be bothered.
In any case, the reporting on how marriage for gay people is treated by the media itself is very biased and misinforms. Even the way MA came to become the first legal state. It was a matter of the MA legislature having a deadline to come with a legal amendment to ban gay marriage in their constitution. According to the MA Constitution, they had a certain amount of time, or the court would have to make the decision for them. A power the court did have. The legislation failed to make the cut, the court voted to leave the MA constitution as it stood and there ya go. It was all legal, fair and square. And the states that made the decision AGAINST gays and lesbians without popular vote didn't get criticized for lack of public participation. This is a double standard right there too. Many higher courts are punting the decision and opting for delays and delays. But real lives are affected. The children of gays and lesbians are treated as less equal then their peers from hetero parents.
A family crisis only brings on the urgency of the need to marry and it's cruel to leave couples vulnerable to the whims of hostile heterosexuals. Mores the point: as impossible as it is for the government to MAKE heterosexuals do the right thing for their spouses and children.
This precedent against gays and lesbians is the first that keeps couples and parents FROM doing the right thing. And it what universe does that make any moral, legal or socially responsible sense?
posted by Regan, at
9/15/2005 11:42 AM
Regan, thank you so much, I appreciate it and fully concur with your statement 101%.
My friends, there was a time I didn't think I'd ever marry. I didn't until late in life, at age 35. I married a white man. Something VERY unpopular (somewhat still )and illegal years ago. There is something in me offended by this treatment of gay men and women on a human basis. I've heard all the objections on gay marriage, but I've lso seen how some people reacted to me and my husband in public. I saw someone who stared hatefully at me and my husband, be cruel to their little child for being polite to me. The child didn't see me and my husband as any thing other than who had been nice to her and her mother, despite the hate stare.
Those looks to kill were creepy and disconcerting. I don't have to imagine it happening to my gay friends, or how those looks to kill can easily turn into ACTIONS to kill. I am a fortunate woman, having been given the gift of love from and FOR my gay neighbors and friends. To enjoy the presence and connection to their children and parents.
I never considered my intellectual opinions coming from anything other than simple logic, facts and experience. It's simple to me. I won't forgive how complicated it's being made by hostile parties. Parties disinterested in the human perspective, but the agenda to render gays and lesbians INHUMAN and outside the realm of ordinary human possibility. I have no care to restrain myself from challenging what I KNOW is conjecture and myth that comes from INEXPERIENCE and ignorance. The agenda that exploits fear and ignorance. No morally sound agenda WOULD do that.
I knew that it would take more than kind words and the occasional dinner and movie with my gay friends. It was going to take exhausting hours on the phone, writing articles, and creating ambitious literary projects for confronting the haters in the street or pulpits and using my heterosexual privilege to get into doors and forums that shut out my gay family. I was going to have to get dirty and take a pounding from those unrestrained in THEIR opinions and agendas.
Wearing my pink triangles and bold t-shirts with MY agenda printed on them has invited some physical risks and confrontations, but I don't care. BRING IT! Just let 'em try and get in my face because I am SO ready. Just so you know, when it comes to those phony intellectual humps that pontificate on the 'homosexual agenda', more and more they are avoiding us dissenters because it's getting easier and easier to make them look like the mean spirited phonies they really are.
They are keeping their opinions either to their own personal media or with those who agree with them. And those that do are less and less moderate, but the really hateful extremists. The every day citizen will realize that gays and lesbians marrying is the least of our worries or none at all. Just as those who found that mixed couples weren't either and neither were their handsome and healthily vigorous mixed children. Someone made sure that I could marry the man I loved and I can do no less than those committed forebears.
The courts must eventually recognize this as a human issue unique to gays ONLY, not just one of gender. I'm here in the trenches because the fight is right, and I'd have HATED to miss it.
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