Equal voices
THE PROPOSED constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that goes before the Legislature tomorrow faces near-certain defeat. That will be a victory for equality and compassion even if Attorney General Thomas Reilly's recent certification of a harsher alternative proposed for the 2008 ballot makes the political message murkier. Sixteen months and some 6,000 weddings after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, we hope the state can simply move on.
The Supreme Judicial Court's 2003 ruling that same-sex couples cannot be denied marriage rights in Massachusetts was a landmark stand for justice. That principle would be strengthened if the Legislature rejected the amendment tomorrow, adding its voice to the SJC ruling. The numbers show that voters reject writing discrimination into the Constitution; recent elections have resulted in a net gain of gay marriage supporters since the first vote on the amendment in 2004.
But gay-marriage advocates cannot become complacent; looming ahead is a more stringent petition Reilly allowed to proceed last week, which would ban gay marriage without even the veneer of civil unions. Some legislators who supported the current amendment may now place their bets on this effort for 2008. It is disheartening to contemplate another three years of rancorous debate on a question that many voters are ready to declare settled, and that is not the top issue for any but a small percentage on either side.
Proponents of the amendments like to say they are only letting the people be heard. Governor Romney, in a letter to Reilly this month, wrote that ''to silence the voice of the people on a question of such great consequence would be a profound injustice." But the people have been heard. They have been heard through their elected representatives, a majority of whom told the Associated Press last week that they would not vote to ban gay marriage.
They have been heard at the polls, where every challenger to a supporter of gay marriage was defeated in the 2004 election. They have been heard in public opinion polls, where 56 percent of Massachusetts voters in a Boston Globe poll this March said gay marriages should be allowed by law.
And they have been heard in the loving acceptance of gay married couples and their children in communities as varied as Dracut and Newton. It isn't that the voice of the people has been silenced. It's that opponents of gay marriage don't like what is being said.
The people of Massachusetts have more experience with gay marriage than anyone else. They are not in crisis mode. A dedicated band of opponents will forever claim that this basic civil right is a destructive social force. The rest of the state knows better.
