THE COURANT’S GRACELESS EDITORIAL
November 21st, 2006 by Brian
On Planet Courant the editors view the Massachusetts legislature’s unlawful obstruction of a referendum on marriage as an act of democracy. From “Mr. Romney’s Graceless Act:”
Mitt Romney, outgoing Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential hopeful, did not act very presidential this week when he took his anti-gay marriage crusade to the streets and joined other conservatives and religious groups in shouting “Let the people vote!” over and over again.
Mr. Romney was demonstrating against the legislature’s decision to adjourn rather than vote on whether to put a proposal to ban gay marriage on the November 2008 ballot. Conservatives collected 170,000 signatures to force a statewide referendum on the issue. The legislature’s refusal to authorize it before adjourning has prompted Mr. Romney to threaten legal action to force the Supreme Judicial Court to order the ballot question…
We challenge Mr. Romney and other detractors to prove that the ruling has in any way diminished the legal bond between heterosexual couples… Insisting on a popular vote is a polarizing gesture by Mr. Romney, who has no authority in the matter.
The only thing “graceless” here is the Courant’s refusal to tell its readers the truth about same-sex “marriage” and what is really happening in Massachusetts. If the editors are so sure that same-sex “marriage” is the will of the people why are they so afraid of a referendum? And instead of pretending that nothing has changed since same-sex “marriage” was imposed on Massachusetts, why doesn’t the Courant report on Boston’s David Parker, the evangelical Christian father whose opposition to a pro same-sex “marriage” book in his 5 year old’s kindergarten class landed him in prison for a night, or Boston Catholic Charities’ being forced to end its century-long adoption practice rather than be coerced into placing children with same-sex couples? For that matter, why does the Courant no longer report on the doctor at Waterbury’s St. Mary’s Hospital who filed a complaint of discrimination against the Christian institution for not recognizing his same-sex civil union partner? Why has the Courant never reported on the man who was prosecuted for making a pro civil union death threat against local Catholic lobbyist Marie Hilliard?
Massachusetts is the only state that sanctions same-sex marriage, and only because the narrowest of majorities on its high court commanded lawmakers to permit it. Knowing same-sex marriage did not enjoy popular support, the mob had to subvert the constitutionally established lawmaking process and got what it wanted through the back door.
Angered by the trampling of their rights, more than 170,000 people signed petitions requesting a vote on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. On Thursday, just as state lawmakers were about to decide whether to put the question to voters, The Boston Globe declared a referendum on same-sex marriage would lead to “costly, manipulative TV ads; relentless talk show vitriol; a painful divide between neighbors and within families; a coarsening of the public debate.”
In other words, a fair public debate and vote in which the petitioners are granted their constitutional rights to redress their grievances and have this issue decided democratically. The homosexual mob prefers to trample other people’s rights because it knows people in voting booths can’t be cowed by the thought police. No vote will be forthcoming, however. Lawmakers adjourned their constitutional convention without taking up the amendment, skirting their sworn duty to have an up-or-down vote and all but killing any chance the proposal will appear on the 2008 ballot…
What happened Thursday was tyranny: the calculated denial of the rights of equals; the shredding of the rule of law.
The good news is that Massachusetts continues to be the exception. As noted by Stanley Kurtz, 2006 was another year in which most voters said they want to protect marriage from being redefined:
With the important exception of Arizona, 2006 was an excellent election for those who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Amendments defining marriage as a man-woman union passed in seven out of eight states (Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Colorado, South Dakota, and Idaho) by an average vote of 61 percent. The narrow loss in Arizona was not because voters favored gay marriage, but because of a successful campaign against the measure’s ban on domestic partner benefits.
The Arizona result might seem to indicate that voters favor domestic partner benefits, yet even here the message was mixed. Colorado, for example, not only passed a marriage amendment, but also defeated a separate measure creating domestic partnership benefits. And several other state amendments that included civil-union/domestic-partnership bans also passed. Wisconsin, for example, had a measure much like Arizona’s. Yet the amendment passed comfortably in this fairly liberal state, even in the face of a huge effort by same-sex-marriage supporters. So voters everywhere still see marriage as the union of a man and a woman…
There is now a good case to be made that turning to liberal courts to make an end-run around the legislative process was a serious strategic error for supporters of same-sex marriage. More than half of the states now have marriage amendments in place, and that number seems likely to grow.
