| Previous statements by former governor William F. Weld on gay marriage:
Weld said he began supporting same-sex marriage in the early 1990's after
meeting with Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic. ''He made a
convincing, logical case: Society should endorse gay marriage as a way of saying
put up or shut up,'' Weld later recounted. ''Ultimately, that is logical and correct.''
''It is a thunderbolt, but a thunderbolt correctly heard,'' Weld said after the Supreme
Judicial Court declared gay marriage legal in 2003. ''It reminds me of some of the early civil rights cases, when the Warren Court all
but said somebody has to do this.''
Speaking of his expansion of gay rights as governor, he added, ''A lot of the stuff
we did foreshadowed the opinion.''
''We see the SJC's ruling as unequivocal: The existing ban on gay marriage for gay
people is unconstitutional,'' a January 2004 letter signed by Weld, two former
attorneys general, and two top lawyers said.
''The recognition of gay marriage, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court has done,
is the conservative point of view,'' Weld told the Log Cabin Republicans during the
2004 Republican National Convention in New York. ''It's making the same demands
on gays and lesbians as are made on everyone else when they want to
commit to each other for a lifetime. I'm surprised that that is not a more broadly
held point of view.''
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