Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is seeking to let the people of Massachusetts exercise a right under their state constitution -- the right to vote to amend the state constitution.
Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts said on Sunday that he would ask the state’s highest court to order a question banning same-sex marriage onto the ballot if legislators did not address the issue.Mr. Romney, a Republican, said he would file a request this week for a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court to direct the secretary of state to place the question on the ballot if lawmakers do not vote on the issue on Jan. 2, the final day of the session.
The governor, an opponent of same-sex marriage who decided not to seek re-election as he considers running for president, made his announcement to the cheers of same-sex-marriage opponents at a rally on the Statehouse steps. Supporters of same-sex marriage staged a protest across the street.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November 2003 that same-sex marriages were legal. Since then, more than 8,000 same-sex couples have married in the state.
More than 170,000 people have signed a petition in support of the ballot question, which would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Mr. Romney has criticized lawmakers since they refused this month to take up the question during a joint session. They voted instead to recess until Jan. 2, all but killing the measure.
“A decision not to vote is a decision to usurp the Constitution, to abandon democracy and substitute a form of what this nation’s founders called tyranny, that is, the imposition of the will of those in power, on the people,” Mr. Romney said. “The issue now before us is not whether same-sex couples should marry. The issue before us today is whether 109 legislators will follow the Constitution.”
By refusing to do its duty and vote, the Massachusetts legislature has decided that the will of the people -- and the dictates of the Massachusetts Constitution -- don't matter when it comes to the issue of overturning the decision of a rogue court that favored a favorite liberal constituency.
Supporters of homosexual marriage make the following specious argument.
“One of the tenets of the Constitution is that you do not put the rights of a minority up for a popularity contest,” said Mark Solomon, campaign director of Mass Equality, a group that supports same-sex marriage. “It is one of the very principles this country was founded upon.”
Actually, Mr. Solomon, that is a fundamental misstatement of the nature of the Constitution -- both state and federal. Perhaps the most basic tenet of constitutionalism is that the people limit government through the use of constitutions -- and that they have the right (to crib from Jefferson) to alter or abolish the governments they establish under them. In failing to take a vote the Massachusetts legislature is exceeding its authority under the state constitution -- forbidding the people as a whole their right to alter that document.
Bravo for governor Romney for his courageous stand in favor of the right of the people to be heard.
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This now-common refrain, "Let the people vote," ignores the fact that the citizens of Massachusetts already have the right to vote on gay marriages. Under the current law, if a person in Massachusetts wants a gay marriage, they can go to the courthouse and get one (provided they can find a spouse.) If a person in Massachusetts _doesn't_ want a gay marriage, then they can make sure not to enter into one.
Right now, the system is a perfect compromise. Every voice can be heard, and every couple can choose the marriage that is right for them. If Romney has his way, instead of "voting" on their own marriages, people would be voting on other people's marriages...what kind of messed-up system is that?
|| Posted by Phil, November 30, 2006 04:00 AM ||That argument doesn't fly -- it is like arguing that people "vote on bank robbery" by choosing whether or not to go down and rip off the local office of Bank of America or Citibank.
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, November 30, 2006 04:42 AM ||You are absolutely right, but the "bank robbers"--the people who insist on the right to "vote" on _other people's_ marriages--in this case don't realize that they are criminals.
That's what you meant, right? "Bank robbers" are the ones who think they have the right to destroy other people's lives through their actions, while "non-bank robbers" go about their own business.
|| Posted by Phil, November 30, 2006 12:18 PM ||If gay marriage is imposed upon a society without the consent of the governed, and the governed are denied the opportunity to fix the activist decision of over-reaching judges who act as black-robed dictators, then the only solution left is violent revolution against a government that no longer has legitimacy.
|| Posted by Jacob, November 30, 2006 01:44 PM ||Because after all, state-recognition of gay marriage places an affirmative burden upon every citizen of the state -- meaning that gay marriage impacts each and every citizen of the state. And since the "gay marriage advocates insist upon taking benefits from the state and private businesses without the consent of the people, then it is they who are the true "bank robbers" in RWR's analogy.
This "affirmative burden" of which you speak--perhaps you are talking about all the hospital employees who will now be obligated to permit people to visit their partners? Such an empath you are, to identify with their plight.
When courts deemed interracial marriage to be outside the purview of state governments to prevent; would violent revolution have been appropriate then, too? Certainly, those marriages also impacted each and every citizen in every state.
|| Posted by Phil, December 12, 2006 11:52 AM ||No, that is not what I believe Jacob refers to -- and that you leap to such an argument is a sign of your intellectual dishonesty.
What I refer to is the private business owner who will now be required to subsidize that relationship as a marriage, contrary to his/her religious beliefs, to give one example.
And the interracial marriage bans were an affront to the definition of marriage, not an essential element of it. To try to claim otherwise is logically absurd.
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, December 12, 2006 07:09 PM ||The definition of marriage I refer to, of course, is one man and one woman.
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, December 13, 2006 04:44 AM ||Hey Rhymes With Right,
It looks like you are answering a question that I asked in my last post, but the post has not appeared yet in the comments.
That said, what you provided is not a definition. You're clarifying one aspect of what you're talking about, but I couldn't take the phrase "one man and one woman" and subsitute it into a sentence containing the word "marriage." Marriage requires a contract of some sort between those two people.
For example, I couldn't say, "My brother and his fiancee entered into one man and one woman." This might seem like linguistic fussiness, but you are the one who introduced the notion of "definitions" to the conversation.
Even if we did parse out a definition, it's important to recognize that marriage is socially constructed, and the nature of marriage has changed continually throughout the thousands of years people have been married.
In the U.S., we have improved the institution of marriage in several key ways. For example, we require participants in a marriage to be consenting adults in almost every state. We also allow both interfaith marriages and interracial marriages, a notion which would have been verboten in various cultures throughout the centuries. Perhaps most importantly, we re-defined marriage to be a system of partnership instead of a system of ownership where women are chattel.
That said, there is no reason we should not continue to strengthen civil marriage by welcoming consenting adult same-sex couples in every state, not just in Massachusetts. It would lead to the greatest good for the greatest number, since, as I said, if you don't want to enter into a same sex marriage, you wouldn't have to.
|| Posted by Phil, December 13, 2006 02:09 PM ||I was -- and don't know where your old post went to.
And I was simply replying in shorthand. You, knowing that, decided to be a pompous ass.
After all, by your own admission it was clear that I was cutting straight (no pun intended) to the place where we disagree.
But when it comes down to it, we have an even more basic disagreement. You see marriage as merely a social construct -- I see it as having a basis in nature, with society merely codifying that natural construct.
Ultimately, marriage is a contracted relationship between one man and one woman, based upon the structure found in nature designed to encourage reproduction and the raising of children.
Unfortunately, some societies have tried to clutter up that natural institution with man-made constructs like racism, religious bigotry, and the concept of chattel. It is a good thing that we have worked to strip away the unnecessary (and unnatural) accretions.
But what you are talking about is the removal of a fundamental part of the institution of marriage.
And by the way, Phil -- your argument works just fine when it comes to repealing all anti-discrimination laws as they apply to private individuals, institutions, and businesses. After all, if you don't want to discriminate against blacks, you wouldn't have to.
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, December 13, 2006 07:04 PM ||Do you call everyone who disagrees with you a pompous ass, or only the ones who try to carefully delineate the terms you're discussing?
I can understand the logic behind the notion that marriage is based on nature and designed to encourage reproduction and raising of children. But how do you justify discriminating against some infertile couples and not others?
By your logic, my argument works fine when applied to any law, anywhere. ("Don't want murder? Then don't commit one!") I'd say the difference between the way we're applying the argument is that my interpretation permits the greatest number of options for citizens. If same-sex marriage is illegal, then same-sex couples have zero options to get married, and mixed-sex couples can easily marry. Under current Massachusetts law, both sets of couples have similar rights. This increases the option for same-sex couples to marry by 100%, but does not reduce the right for mixed-sex couples to marry at all.
If antidiscrimination laws were optional, then nothing in the system exists to ensure any rights for minority customers. So, for example, a muslim's options for food and lodging in a city could be reduced from 100% to 50%, but they could also be reduced to 0%.
For me, the analogy works-- having options is akin to "voting" in some ways. And while I understand religions objections are important to the people who hold them, our laws must uphold the rights of people to have control over their own behaviors, but not necessarily to have control over the behaviors of others.
So, for example, if I have a religious opposition to the eating of meat, I can choose not to eat meat. I can open up a grocery store that doesn't sell meat. But I can't open up a store that doesn't sell to meat-eaters. I can't, for example, verify that my customers won't use my onions to season their beef stews. At some point, it's important to allow others the agency to live their own lives as they see fit.
|| Posted by Phil, December 13, 2006 09:49 PM ||Actually, I reserve the term for those who act like a pompous ass. You knew what i was doing, but you decided to play a little semantic game in an attempt to make yourself look good and belittle me -- hence my use of the term.
As for my justification in regards to infertile couples, the answer is simple -- we recognize those relationships that conform to that natural model, regardless of whether or not reproduction actually does take place.
And I'm not going to get into the discussion of the latter part of your post, as it becomes an entirely different, off-topic discussion (though one we can engage in at another point in time).
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, December 14, 2006 05:03 AM ||Well, I would apologize for hurting your feelings, but I know that would make me sound like an even more pompous ass.
More importantly, I'd like to clarify that I don't find the subject of determining a very specific "definition of marriage" to be trivial or semantic. That phrase--"the definition of marriage"--is thrown around by same-sex marriage opponents as if there has been a single, agreed-upon definition since the dawn of time, and that simply isn't the case.
Many people's definition involves not a "natural joining" or a "socially contracted joining" as we have discussed, but a "sacred joining" or a "holy joining."
All of which is to say: no, I really didn't know what you were doing.
(Regarding the off-topic paragraph: I was responding to the religious objections mentioned in the Dec. 12, 7:09pm post.)
|| Posted by Phil, December 14, 2006 12:44 PM ||Actually, you would have sounded like a decent guy -- which is not to accept the notion that my feelings were hurt.
I accept your explanation -- and acknowledge where the other discussion was coming from. I just didn't want to try to have a two-pronged discussion going on the comment thread.
|| Posted by Rhymes With Right, December 14, 2006 08:26 PM ||Post a comment