There is no other way to put it. Yesterday, to my surprise and many others, the Massachusetts General Court (Legislature) voted to advance an amendment to the state constitution banning same sex marriage. The amendment required 25% of the chambers support or 50 votes in favor. Well it got 62 "yay" votes and 134 votes cast as "nay". So the homophobes got 12 more votes than they needed to allow the amendment to pass.
Again, this is absolutely ridiculous! A minority of the legislature has voted to strip away the rights of a minority group. Is this communist Russia? Since when do we vote on minority rights? I wonder what the outcome would have been if we put a women's right to vote to a popular vote before suffrage? Or if we had voted on inter-racial marriage a few decades ago? We wouldn't think to do that...but suddenly its ok for the gays. Granting civil rights to others should not be at the expense of popularity contest.
Today's Boston Globe Editorial said it perfectly when it wrote:
Opponents of gay marriage say that the one-quarter vote requirement exists to protect the rights of minorities, yet they are trying to use this process to extinguish minority rights.And to what end? We are still waiting to hear of the first heterosexual couple whose marriage has been damaged by the more than 8,500 same-sex marriages performed here since 2004.
Ok, I'd like to meet someone whose marriage has fallen apart because Bill & Ted are in love and got married. Please email me if your marriage has fallen apart. I'd love to hear all about your horrors. I'm a great listener! I won't blog about you, I swear!
So here's the deal my people.... we need to fight back. Call your state senator and state representative to say A.) Thank you for voting "No" and supporting gay marriage or B.) I'm very disappointed with your vote against gay marriage. Click here to see how your elected officials voted.
They (the anti-gay marriage folks) say the people should be heard. So make yourself heard and call every Tom, Dick and Harry on Beacon Hill and tell them how you feel.
The ship is not sunk yet. We have one more chance during this legislative cycle to kill this amendment.
2 comments:
I've never understood the whole anti-gay-marriage thing--the conservative arguments simply aren't sound. If the beef is they don't want to call it "marriage", then call it something else, but you know whenever they use semantics for their excuse, it's a shoddy argument. I'm not in your state, VpO, but if I could call my senator and help you out, I would. Let's hope somebody gets some sense crammed into their heads soon!
Victor
Yes, this is communist Russia. I had to wait online for my daily ration of cinnamon dolce latte this morning to prove it. :)
:)
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