Finneran signals he won't try to block start of gay marriages
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran said yesterday he does not intend to stop gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts next month, leaving Governor Mitt Romney as the last Beacon Hill leader contemplating a legal strategy to block same-sex marriages.
Finneran, one of the most prominent and powerful foes of gay marriage in Massachusetts government, said there is a minor reference in the state budget proposal House Democrats released yesterday that calls for a report detailing the "revenue and expenditure impact" of gay marriage.
"I don't anticipate any other action," Finneran told reporters during a visit to the Globe's editorial board. The concise statement echoed one he uttered earlier this month at a meeting with the editorial board of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which reported that the speaker said, "Where it stands now, same-sex marriages will occur" once the ruling takes effect May 17.
Finneran's signal that he is bowing out of the fight followed a similar move by Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, who last month refused a request by Romney to ask the Supreme Judicial Court to stay its ruling legalizing gay marriage while the Legislature attempts to ban gay marriage via a constitutional amendment. The Legislature took the first steps last month toward sending voters a proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage and create civil unions, but the process will take at least until November 2006.
Romney is now the last prominent opponent who has not ruled out a fight. Instead, he has asked citizens to "stay tuned." FoxNews reported last night that Romney intends today to announce that he will file legislation that would allow him to appoint a special attorney general to go to the Supreme Judicial Court and seek to stay the court's decision.Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's communications director, denied last night that anything has been scheduled. "At some point, the governor will have something to say," he said. "All along, we have declined to discuss the options the governor is reviewing. The Fox report said the governor has scheduled a news conference . . . but that is wrong."Earlier yesterday,Fehrnstrom said the Republican governor would make an announcement "on next steps" later this month, adding that "the options before us are extremely limited."
Finneran, a lawyer as well as a lawmaker, said he was baffled by what options, if any, Romney is contemplating.
"The governor keeps making veiled references to `stay tuned,' " Finneran said yesterday. "They may have a spitball or a slider or a curveball. I don't know."
Officials of the Roman Catholic Church, who have for months banked on the speaker's legal and legislative acumen to block the SJC's ruling, said they were not upset with the Mattapan legislator.
"The speaker usually knows what he's talking about, and I don't have anything to refute him," said Gerry D'Avolio, a lawyer and lobbyist with the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of the four Roman Catholic dioceses in the state. "It looks like it will happen May 17, and that's unfortunate."
Other gay-marriage opponents were not so willing to let Finneran off the hook for relenting. Ronald A. Crews, spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage, an umbrella group that has led the fight to overturn the SJC's ruling, said yesterday that the Legislature could still try to pass a measure that would put off for quite a while the issuance of marriage certificates to same-sex couples.
"I regret that the Legislature is bowing out," said Crews, who is mulling a run for Congress. "I believe there is still more they could do."
In recent weeks, a top Finneran lieutenant, Judiciary Committee Chairman Eugene L. O'Flaherty, drafted a bill that would alter the state's marriage statute by explicitly offering a rationale for limiting marriage to heterosexuals, namely, the desire of the state to encourage procreation and family. But O'Flaherty did not introduce the bill, because the Senate had no appetite for such a measure.
Crews, a former Georgia state lawmaker, said the House should have passed that bill.
"It could initiate another lawsuit that could possibly take more time, if, all of a sudden, we had a new state law, signed by Governor Romney, with a rational basis," he said.
Backers of the SJC's ruling said yesterday they were cautiously buoyed by Finneran's words, but were not ready to let their guard down.
"I put a bunch of people on alert about the budget, in case something was inserted in some small, seemingly innocuous fashion that would affect same-sex marriages," said Arline Isaacson, cochairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. "I said, check out tax policy, the Department of Public Health, anywhere. I'm taking a Reaganesque approach to this: trust but verify."
