The Massachusetts legislature, sitting July 12 as a state constitutional convention, deferred any vote on a proposed amendment that would ban both gay marriage and civil unions until after the November elections. The effect was more political than legal.
The body was again considering an amendment because opponents of same-sex marriage had collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot. However, the law requires that at least 50 of the 200 legislators in two successive sessions vote to do so.
The previous day the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the body that had declared a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, had okayed the amendment petition. It ruled that the petition process could be used to change the state constitution, and, in effect, reverse the court’s earlier decision on marriage.
However, it left open the possibility that should the amendment be adopted, it may be subject to legal challenge as being in conflict with other portions of that constitution.
Both proponents and opponents of the amendment demonstrated outside the State House as the legislators spent four and a half hours wading about halfway through the 21 items on their agenda. They did not get to item number 20, the marriage amendment, before voting 100 to 91 to adjourn and reconvene on November 9. There are only two weeks left in the legislative session.
‘Pols do chicken dance over gay wed,’ said the headline in the Boston Herald. While the Boston Globe said in an editorial, ‘Delay is far better than killing the proposal by refusing to take it up or by other legislative trickery.’
‘We dodged a bullet, because had there been a vote today we would have lost,’ said Arline Isaacson, cochair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. She believes that time is on the side of pro-gay forces in education people to the realities of thousands of gay and lesbian Bay Staters who have wed.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive director Matt Foreman called it ‘a welcome respite.’ He praised the work of MassEquality, the lead organization in making the case for gay marriage.