{"id":9189,"date":"2007-06-13T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-13T19:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9189"},"modified":"2007-06-13T12:20:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T19:20:00","slug":"mass-gay-marriage-faces-test-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9189","title":{"rendered":"“Mass. Gay Marriage Faces Test This Week”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From ABC News\/AP:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Gay couples have been marrying in Massachusetts for more than three years, but the battle over same-sex marriage in the only state that allows it is anything but settled.\n<\/p>\n

\nLawmakers meet Thursday in a special joint session to decide the fate of a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the landmark 2003 court ruling granting gays the right to marry.\n<\/p>\n

\nThey have three options: send the question to voters next year, kill it, or postpone the vote.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe outcome could not only have an effect on gay couples hoping to wed in Massachusetts, but on the fate of same-sex marriage nationwide and even the presidential ambitions of former Gov. Mitt Romney.\n<\/p>\n

\nBoth sides have pumped thousands of dollars into television, radio, Internet and telephone campaigns. Amendment supporters accuse Gov. Deval Patrick of trading job offers for votes, something Patrick denies. Democratic heavyweights such as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have called local leaders, fearing a nasty gay marriage fight could detract from the presidential race.\n<\/p>\n

\nMuch has changed in Massachusetts since the last vote when lawmakers narrowly backed the amendment.\n<\/p>\n

\nLast session, two of the state’s three top political leaders, Romney among them, opposed gay marriage. Now all three, including Patrick and new Senate President Therese Murray, who presides over the joint session, support gay marriage.\n<\/p>\n

\nPatrick, who is personally lobbying lawmakers and on Saturday became the first sitting governor to march in Boston’s gay pride parade, has warned of “great passions and great fear and great intolerance” among supporters of the amendment.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThis, of course, takes us right back to yesterday’s discussion<\/a>—the charge here being that those who oppose gay marriage are, of necessity, “intolerant”—which is shorthand for “homophobic” or bigoted, and is meant to shame amendment supporters into silence.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut as I’ve argued here on numerous occasions, plenty of legitimate arguments have been marshaled against same sex marriage that have nothing whatever to do with “intolerance”—a point made manifest by those same opponents’ support of civil unions, binding interpersonal contracts, and all the trappings of marriage save for the shoehorning into the definition of the term marriage an arrangement that has no historical or traditional claim on the term. \n<\/p>\n

\nBut Governor Patrick—like President Bush and Linda Chavez<\/a>, eg., on Immigration Reform—has taken the cowardly route, and has used the Progressive gambit that seeks to galvanize opinion out of fear of social ostracism, rather than shown a willingness to engage critics and opponents on their actual arguments.\n<\/p>\n

\nI am—and always have been—open to being persuaded that disallowing same sex marriage runs afoul of the Constitution.  I don’t believe it does—I reject the comparisons to Loving<\/i>, though were that comparison made in defense of civil unions (rather than “marriage”), I should find it far more compelling—and I believe the state can show a compelling state interest in sanctioning traditional marriage while not wishing to give those who wish to broaden the definition any wiggle room that could, conceivably, lead (necessarily, I should think, given the legal thinking involved) to other relationships being granted the same status somewhere down the line.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd yes, I’m invoking a legal slippery slope here.  But it bears keeping in mind that one’s mere ability to point out that an argument is relying for its rhetorical force on the slippery slope fallacy does not mean that the argument won’t prove true, ultimately—just that there is no evidence to support the contention presently, marking it as “hyperbolic”.\n<\/p>\n

\nYet there cannot<\/i> be any such evidence until the door is first opened and legal challenges lodged.  And as we’ve seen with “hate speech” and the war on fast foods (which follows from the anti-tobacco campaign, even as we were assured by supporters of the tobacco crusade that such an analogous campaign was laughable), the slippery slope is, with respect to the law, practically built in<\/i>, thanks in large part to improperly constrained (or poorly written) legislation, an activist bent from certain members of the judiciary, and a fidelity to precedent—even bad or potentially unconstitutional precedent—by certain other adjudicators.\n<\/p>\n

\nNone of which matters much to the Governor, who seems quite willing to dismiss such concerns as mere “intolerance” of gays.  Continues Patrick:\n<\/p>\n

\n

“All the (court) did was affirm an old principle that people come before their government as equals, that if the government is going to give marriage licenses to anyone, then they must give them to everybody, even if your choice of spouse is someone of the same gender” […]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nBut of course, the counter to that is that there are plenty of governmental restrictions on “choice of spouse” —from age to biological relationship to the number of spouses allowed, even when the arrangements would be consensual. \n<\/p>\n

\nAnd it simply isn’t true that homosexuals are being denied marriage licenses—just that they are being denied marriage licenses for relationships that are not properly (or traditionally) defined as marriage<\/i>.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich is where civil unions come in.  I don’t understand why the suggestion is so consistently made, by supporters of gay marriage, that granting only “civil unions” to same-sex couples carries with it a stigma and is therefore setting up second-class citizenship for homosexuals who have loving and monogamous same sex relationships.  After all, their actual<\/i> civil rights are protected—as they should be—and there is no discrimination here, unless you count an unwillingness to call something that is not marriage<\/i> by the name<\/i> of marriage discriminatory.\n<\/p>\n

\nSemantically, this is a prickly problem:  Because once you do<\/i> call same sex couplings approved by the state “marriage,” that relationship becomes<\/i> “marriage,” both legally and linguistically speaking.  And by that same token, until you agree to legally sanction same sex couplings as “marriage,” it is not<\/i> marriage —because “marriage” already has a traditional and historical definition that excludes<\/i> same sex couplings.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo the question then becomes, what are the pros and cons of opening up the definition of marriage to legally include<\/i> same sex partnerships.  And as I’ve already noted, the concerns are sufficient, I think, to give us pause.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut proponents of same sex marriage know best, it seems—and so would like to keep the ignorant rubes from voting on the issue:<\/p>\n

\n

[…] Fifty-seven lawmakers have either voted for the proposed amendment or have pledged to do so. Changing eight votes would bring supporters of gay marriage below 50 votes and block the question.\n<\/p>\n

\nMarc Solomon, campaign director of the pro-gay marriage group MassEquality, said activists are working furiously to round up enough votes to kill the question, arguing that the rights of minority groups shouldn’t be put to a popular vote.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

\n“For us to be able to show the rest of the country that at least according to our Legislature that marriage equality is good and fine and worth protecting sends a message around the country that you can do this, too,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[my emphasis]<\/p>\n

\nThe trick of Mr Solomon here is, once again, to paint the “marriage” right as a civil right that is being denied homosexuals (it is not, anymore so than it is being denied, say, nuns or priests, for instance); once he’s done that, he is able to argue that those who wish to vote on the issue are, by implication, bigots who would vote to take away the civil rights of a minority group—an argument that raises the specter of past discrimination against Blacks, Chinese, Women, etc.—and one that pressures the legislature to avoid giving a vote on the issue to “haters.”\n<\/p>\n

\nBut if one believes, as many opponents of same-sex marriage do, that this is not a civil rights question, but is instead a question of vying for control over the way a traditional relationship is defined, refined, or expanded—than the proper way to decide such an issue is by putting it to a vote, not by judicial fiat or legislative blockades.\n<\/p>\n

\nAgain, many opponents of same sex “marriage” are proponents of civil unions.  And in fact, from a libertarian perspective, there are those who would like to see the question of “marriage” divorced entirely from government sanctioning.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut that argument, I think, ignores the same compelling state interest arguments [evidently I am using this term improperly<\/a>; thanks to Moops for the clarification] that place other restrictions on who is granted the “right” to marry. \n<\/p>\n

\nAnd I believe that if proponents of same-sex marriage could convince the majority of voters that there is no teeth to the compelling state interest argument—and that by denying them “inclusion” into the ranks of the “married,” society is setting up a sort of pink Jim Crow dynamic—voters would support their efforts.\n<\/p>\n

\nUntil that time, however, I fail to see why the government—by way of the courts and certain legislatures—should circumvent the electorate in order to foist upon it a potentially (legally and socially) problematic dictate.<\/p>\n

\n

[…] Opponents of gay marriage fear a defeat for the amendment could spawn a new round of legal challenges to force gay marriage in other states, especially if lawmakers agree to rescind a 1913 law that keeps same-sex couples from other states from marrying in Massachusetts.\n<\/p>\n

\n“If same-sex marriage continues in Massachusetts and with the 1913 law possibly being rescinded, then gay marriage would replicate to other states,” Mineau said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd If this indeed happens—without voters being given a say—I predict that what may have come about over time naturally thanks to changes in social mores will become, like the right to abortion before it, a serious and contentious wedge issue for years to come.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich needn’t have been the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From ABC News\/AP: Gay couples have been marrying in Massachusetts for more than three years, but the battle over same-sex marriage in the only state that allows it is anything but settled. Lawmakers meet Thursday in a special joint session to decide the fate of a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the landmark 2003 court ruling granting gays the right to marry. They have three options: send the question<\/p>\n

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