aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, August 29, 2005

Same sex marriage prospects in MA

Michael Demmons points to diminishing support for an anti-gay marriage ammendment in MA:

Two local lawmakers are rethinking their support for a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage but allow civil unions, bolstering predictions the measure won’t secure a majority vote in next month’s Constitutional Convention.

State Reps. James Vallee and Stephen LeDuc said they are talking to gay marriage supporters and opponents about whether to back the amendment during the upcoming second round of voting.

“I have been re-evaluating the whole circumstance, and I am keeping an open mind,” said LeDuc, D-Marlborough. “I’m reaching out to people on both sides of the issue.”

Vallee, D-Franklin, said “there hasn’t been any adverse affect on society” since gay marriages started in the state in May 2004, two months after the amendment passed the first time.

Nathan Newman says that’s how the system should work:

While the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, it would only take a majority of the legislature followed by a vote by a majority of the population to reverse that decision.

To the frustration of the proponents of banning gay marriage, the legislature doesn’t appear to have the votes to overturn the court decision.

The legislature probably wouldn’t have had the political will to pass gay marriage on it own, but with the court’s moral argument about what equal protection means, they now have the political courage to uphold it. In some ways, this is a good model for what the judicial role should be in a democratic society and at the federal level. Courts would make clear moral statements of what rights should be under the Constitution, with legislators free to accept or reject that judicial viewpoint.