Marriage measure a shaky solution

Outside the State House last week, the passion over gay marriage was clear. Supporters held a candlelight vigil and called attention to the adopted children of gay couples. Opponents shook signs declaring homosexuality a sin, with some shouldering wooden crucifixes around Beacon Hill.

But inside the House chamber, the tedious legislative process had ground the drama into a mushy compromise that no one loves.

Lawmakers appeared reluctant to embrace the measure, which would ban gay marriage and create civil unions for gay couples. The key interest groups, whose participation would probably be crucial to a ballot fight in November 2006, are adamantly opposed to the proposed constitutional amendment.

"I'm not sure there's going to be anybody behind it," said Chip Ford, director of operations for Citizens for Limited Taxation, a statewide advocacy group that has fought for and against ballot measures in Massachusetts for decades. "It's a compromise, but everybody's going away unhappy."

The most influential and best-funded groups on both sides of the gay-marriage debate now stand ready to campaign against the proposed amendment if it reaches the statewide ballot in 2006. They are devising various scenarios to scuttle the measure before it gets there, either when the convention reconvenes March 29 or in the 2005-2006 legislative session, when it must be approved again. "It will more than likely draw opposition from two opposing camps, both operating under the theory that half a loaf is worse than none," said state Representative Robert S. Hargraves, a Groton Republican who opposes gay marriage and civil unions.

The result: a compromise without a constituency that, even if it clears the Legislature, could have difficulty attracting major political backing for a ballot fight.

Among lawmakers and interest groups, liberals don't like the compromise because they view civil unions as falling far short of the promise of gay marriage that was established by the Supreme Judicial Court. Conservatives don't like it because they see civil unions as equivalent to marriage for same-sex couples.

The architects of the amendment say the fact that neither the political left nor right has embraced the compromise demonstrates its beauty.

They argue that their measure is designed to appeal to the vast middle, that banning gay marriage and establishing civil unions in the same stroke is something the majority of Massachusetts residents agree with, even if activists on both sides don't.

Yet lawmakers' ambivalence was evident last week, even among those who were voting for the amendment. The compromise has only stayed alive so far because of shifting and temporary political calculations; at different times, liberals and conservatives have lent support even though they oppose the measure, in hope of achieving their preferred result down the line.

The amendment's genuine supporters spoke far less about civil unions than they did about what they described as their duty to send the voters something. Over nearly 10 hours of debate Thursday, only a handful of lawmakers praised the measure, while thunderous criticism came from all sides.

House Ways and Means Chairman John H. Rogers, one of the supporters, called the compromise a "principled paradox," capturing the conflicted core of the amendment.

Social conservatives took to the House floor to denounce the amendment as contradictory and possibly dangerous to religious institutions.

How can marriage be declared unique if civil unions are established as the legal equivalent of marriage, they asked. Several Republican lawmakers said they fear that activist judges would use the statute to order churches to open their doors to gay civil union ceremonies.

Ronald A. Crews, a spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage, referred to the compromise as an "orphan amendment," because no one seems to be firmly behind it.

"It would be difficult to get something like this passed by the people, because the people on both sides of the issue would be against it," he said.

Not long ago, liberals would have been thrilled with civil unions for gay couples. But with the SJC ruling on the books, anything that bans gay marriage is viewed as writing discrimination into the state constitution.

Gay-rights advocates are not satisfied with the amendment's guarantee that civil unions would provide "entirely the same" rights and benefits as marriages. Civil unions, they argue, would not be recognized in other states and would not give them access to federal rights and benefits.

"They're taking away rights," said Arline Isaacson, cochairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. "They can't expect us to not be unhappy."

In most other states that have debated gay marriage, the issue hasn't been whether to enact civil unions. Instead, voters or state legislators have decided whether to declare marriage solely to be the union of a man and a woman, a clearer, if more limited, framework that has aroused passionate debate in many states.

Thirty-eight states have defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.

The lone state with civil unions in place, Vermont, only went that far under court order, and that was accomplished at the legislative level, without an amendment to the state constitution.

In Massachusetts, lawmakers were spurred to action by the SJC, which went further than the court in Vermont by enunciating a constitutional right for gays to marry. House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, the two most powerful State House legislators, cosponsored the amendment that includes both a gay-marriage ban and civil unions, and they have rallied lawmakers behind what they view as the most tenable compromise.

Backers say they have public opinion behind them. A Globe poll last month found that 53 percent of Massachusetts residents oppose gay marriage, and 60 percent support civil unions. In addition, 71 percent of respondents said they want voters to be able to define marriage, not the courts or the Legislature.

Representative Gale D. Candaras said she backs the compromise because she feels it is important to get something on the ballot, so voters can weigh in. She predicted that it would eventually be approved by voters despite campaigns against it, even though she said she had no plans to work for its passage. "I'm not going to be out there fighting for this amendment," said Candaras, a Wilbraham Democrat. "This is beyond me. This is a matter that people hold in their hearts and their minds, as part of their tradition.

"This doesn't satisfy the far left, and it doesn't satisfy the far right, but politics is the art of compromise," she said. "The vast, silent majority, at least in my district, will ignore the far left and ignore the far right and will go to the polls and will vote for this."

Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg, a gay-marriage supporter, said the deep divisions in society and the Legislature leave the situation fluid. With few lawmakers or citizens staunchly in favor of civil unions, he said, an entirely different amendment or no amendment at all may emerge from the Constitutional Convention later this month. "This is far from resolved," said Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat. "It's an extraordinarily difficult and perhaps impossible challenge to come up with a compromise on this issue."

Crews, the gay marriage opponent, declined to comment on how his group would treat the amendment if it reaches the voters, saying only that he's focusing on killing it in the Legislature. At the very least, he said, voters should have an opportunity to decide separately on the issues of gay marriage and civil unions.

Elizabeth Sherman, a research fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said most in the Legislature and the public probably want to dispose of the issue entirely. That argues for public acceptance of a compromise, she said.

But well-funded campaigns by both liberals and conservatives would change the equation at the ballot box.

"It's a compromise that will probably appeal to the general population," Sherman said. "But if both sides are going to be pushing for a no vote, then we're going to be right back where we started from. It doesn't sound to me like there's going to be any mobilization, money, or leadership on behalf of this resolution."

Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.