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Wayne Besen
PO Box 25491
Brooklyn, NY 11202
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.
6 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.
