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Thursday, November 9, 2006
By Scott Helman and Andrea Estes, Globe Staff
State lawmakers today again delayed a contentious vote on a proposed gay-marriage ban geared for the 2008 ballot, a move that could kill its chances of ever going to the voters.
The House and Senate, meeting in a special joint session, recessed before taking up a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have limited the legal definition of marriage to the union between one man and one woman. Lawmakers voted to adjourn the session until Jan. 2, the last official day of the legislative session.
The 109-87 vote to recess could deal a crushing blow to opponents of same-sex marriage looking to override the landmark court decision three years ago that put Massachusetts on the vanguard of gay rights.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a 4-3 decision in 2003 that gays and lesbians could legally marry under the state constitution.
Because lawmakers didn't formally adjourn the so-called Constitutional Convention, legislative sources said, it could prevent Governor Mitt Romney, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, from ordering the Legislature back into session over the next two months, which he has the power to do.
The proposed ban needed the backing of at least one-quarter of state legislators in this year's legislative session to advance to next year's legislative session, and, ultimately, to the 2008 ballot.
But lawmakers decided to put a vote on the amendment off once again following more than two and a half hours of emotional debate.
"You don't have to live next to us. You don't have to like us," state Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, an openly gay Cambridge Democrat, said in an emotional speech. "We are only asking you today to end the debate so that we can sleep easily knowing ... that we will at least have the right to enjoy the same rights the rest of you have enjoyed for time immemorial."
Proponents of the ban argued that regardless of how legislators felt about same-sex marriage, they ought to respect the wishes of the roughly 170,000 people who they said signed a petition to put it before voters in 2008.
"You don't represent their vote. You represent their interest in allowing them to vote," said Philip Travis, a Rehoboth Democrat retiring from the Legislature this year who has been one of the leading legislative opponents of gay marriage.
Posted by the Boston Globe City & Region Desk at 05:43 PM
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