Marriage rights go beyond the ballot

IN 2000, the same year that my white husband and I, a black woman, exchanged vows in a Dorchester church, voters in Alabama were asked to go to the polls to take a law off the books that once made interracial marriage a crime. For much of our nation's history, such anti miscegenation statutes were the law of the land, not only in the deep South, but throughout the United States.

The people of Alabama, a state with a horrific history of racial division, voted to remove that shameful, centuries-old law that punished men and women for "race mixing." But the vote was closer than expected in 21st century America. A stunning 40 percent of the voting public in Alabama wanted to keep the ban on interracial marriage intact. Whole counties voted to keep a racist law that would have jailed men and women of different races for the "crime" of marrying.

I shudder to think, with all of the progress that we've made, what would have been the message to the nation had Alabama instead cast the majority vote to maintain a law that many of us would look upon today as being an infringement upon our civil rights.

If my husband and I had married in Alabama in 2000, for example, would that law, if it had been supported by the majority, order the dissolution and condemnation of our marriage by the "will of the people"?

Would our love, united by the sacred bonds of matrimony, together with our hopes and dreams of spending a life together as a loving family be instead another cross to bear? And what about our children -- would they be ostracized, penalized because their parents sought to make their lives better through the benefits of marriage?

In 2004, when Massachusetts faced a legal challenge of whether or not same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, we got it right. Marriage equality is written into our Constitution where it belongs and should remain.

As we contemplate a vote at today's constitutional convention on whether a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage should appear on the 2008 ballot, I draw the parallel between my own story and that of my many gay and lesbian constituents. I understand in a personal way my neighbors' desire to have the same protections and status that the rest of us can enjoy, particularly the universal instinct to give our children every opportunity to succeed and prosper.

To those who would argue that the people should decide this issue by vote, I also value and defend the right to vote. Generations of my African-American brothers and sisters in the United States -- and my own ancestors in Haiti -- died for the right to vote. However, I know too that there are some issues that should never be decided by a majority. The abolition of slavery and the right for women and blacks to vote are but a few examples.

The fact is that the ballot question in Alabama six years ago was rather meaningless. The Supreme Court of the United States struck down laws banning interracial marriage in 1967, the summer of the Impossible Dream for the Red Sox.

That was also the year of the impossible dream for millions of Americans like my husband and me. Were it not for that Supreme Court, God knows what would have become of us. Would we, as a society, be "ready" yet or would we have missed the cut?

Or would we miss the window of collective acceptability in the eyes of "the people."

Those of us who oppose this ballot question that would in essence write discrimination into our Constitution rally around a fundamental principle, one that the founders of this Commonwealth made sure to enshrine in the blueprint of this state and in the DNA of this nation. It is not the business of the majority to dictate or define or obliterate the civil rights of others.

America's greatness is not confined to the ballot box. It is in our continued efforts to respect and uphold the civil rights of all of our citizens. Today, we can put an end to this ugly ballot question. The majority should not be allowed to define the civil rights of the minority on the issue of marriage equality.

Linda Dorcena Forry is state representative for the 12th Suffolk District, which includes parts of Dorchester, Mattapan, Milton, and Hyde Park.