Discussion is charged with tears, appeals
The 6 1/2 hours of historic debate yesterday over whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage featured a range of emotions and oratory, from lofty references to the founding fathers to personal memories of discrimination.
There were tears shed, by Senator Dianne Wilkerson, Democrat of Boston, and entreaties to keep God as a guiding force in public policy by Representative Marie Parente, Democrat of Milford.
"Go to the rotunda, the Hall of Flags, that beautiful mural, the depiction of the Pilgrims coming on the Mayflower," Parente said. "It says the Lord is our defense and the Holy One in Israel is our king. We are religious."
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran offered perhaps the most pointed remarks, accusing the Supreme Judicial Court of smearing the Legislature.
"In the majority opinion [of the SJC ruling] was a statement that I would describe as libelous and defamatory of this institution," Finneran said. "The libel spoke to the definition of marriage that has come to us from custom, tradition, every society, every culture, every nation in all of recorded history as one man and one woman. The defamatory statement stated this: In light of that extraordinary history, the SJC said this about you and the citizens of Massachusetts. They said that definition was rooted in animus and bigotry."
Finneran then defended the Legislature's role in the past in protecting gay rights.
"I would try to rebut with facts the libel and slur uttered against us," he said. "The court may have wanted to avail themselves to the history of this place, going back to the early 1980s. Some of you passed bills prohibiting discrimination against gay and lesbian neighbors and friends in housing, employment, credit, and a whole host of things, long before it became politically fashionable."
Finneran urged lawmakers to assert their role in social policy and support his proposed amendment to the constitution, which would outlaw gay marriage and permit civil unions at a later date.
But assistant House majority leader Lida Harkins, a Needham Democrat, opposed it, arguing that the long history of the constitution was one of expanding rights, not restricting them.
"As Lincoln said, this nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," said Harkins. "I have marched with Martin Luther King to this common in Boston to support civil rights. Today I will cast another civil rights vote in defense of our constitution."
Representative David Flynn, a Bridgewater Democrat, described the issue as the toughest he has faced in a long career in government. For him, the question came down to natural law.
"It's like as a legislator being on top of a windy and lonely hill," Flynn said. "You find your closest friends, your immediate family, may doubt your motives. We all have gay and lesbian friends and colleagues and family members. Maybe known or unknown.
"It's not about politics," he said. "I am on the same side as the governor on this issue. This is not about religion. It's not about a bible. It's not about civil rights. It's not about civil law. It's about natural law with me, the law of nature. The Supreme Judicial Court can and does invoke the law of man. The Supreme Judicial Court cannot repeal the law of nature."
Wilkerson spoke of her past civil rights work and her childhood, saying she cannot vote for a measure that would make one group of people less than equal.
"I was born in my grandmother's house in a shotgun shack in Arkansas," Wilkerson said. "The public hospital did not allow blacks to deliver children. We lived in constant fear of the Ku Klux Klan. Blacks had to pull off the road for whites to pass. I had two uncles that decided enough was enough in 1935. . . . It sent one uncle to Springfield, which is how I got there.
"I can't send anyone to that place from where my family fled. My grandmother would never forgive me."
Parente rejected arguments that gay marriage is a civil rights issue.
"It is not discrimination," Parente said. "My parents came from Italy for freedom and a chance to work. They came and played by the rules. I say don't let this be an issue of discrimination."
Senator Brian Joyce, a Milton Democrat, spoke of his own wedding 17 years ago in a Catholic Church and then urged his colleagues to extend the same right to gays. He also worried that putting the question to the public would be unwise.
"We are charged with exercising our judgment," Joyce said. "It is our responsibility to cast votes, even when the matter is controversial. . . . I am unconvinced that civil rights should be decided at the ballot box when emotions are so inflamed. Had the ban on interracial marriage or the decision segregating schools been put on the ballot, each may have been overturned. That does not mean those decisions were wrong."
GLOBE STAFF
Material from State House News Service was used in this report.
