Maneuver may help marriage measure
A little-noticed maneuver in the closing minutes of the Constitutional Convention may help legislative leaders push their compromise on gay marriage and fend off alternative proposals when lawmakers return to the debate later this month.
As the convention wound down last Thursday, Senate President Robert E. Travaglini accepted an amendment by state Senator Brian P. Lees, the Senate's Republican leader, that would make only minor changes to the compromise amendment to ban gay marriage and enact civil unions. The compromise was approved in preliminary votes by the Legislature last week.
Because the amendment was one of the first in a flurry of last-minute filings, it will be among the first voted on by the House and Senate when lawmakers return March 29. The idea, according to one strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was to force an early vote on the compromise, in the hope of avoiding votes on competing proposals.
Lees, meanwhile, said he sees his measure as a middle-of-the-road solution that he hopes can draw a majority. The measure is cosponsored by Travaglini, who controls the gavel in the session.
"I am cautiously optimistic that the revised compromise will succeed," said Lees, of East Longmeadow. "It still meets the needs of the folks that want a ballot question, but also protects the rights and benefits of gay and lesbian couples, which would clearly be lost if a different measure was on the ballot."
Two additional votes this session would constitute final approval before the measure could be considered in the 2005-2006 legislative session. It would then go to the voters in November 2006. On the first vote, backers hope to persuade liberal lawmakers to lend their support in order to cut off measures that don't protect gay rights. On the final vote, conservative House and Senate members could be talked into voting for the amendment based on the argument that sending something to the voters is better than nothing.
Gay-marriage supporters, in the meantime, plan to push a constitutional amendment that would allow civil marriages for same-sex couples while making it clear that churches, synagogues, and mosques would not be forced to recognize them.
The proposed amendment, which represents a strategic shift for gay-marriage proponents, also makes it clear that the Legislature has the power to prohibit polygamy and the marriage of close relatives, addressing other concerns that have been raised. And it would allow voters to weigh in on the gay-marriage question, an idea that appears to have widespread support.
"It makes it clear that no religious organization would ever be forced to perform a marriage that their religion didn't believe in," said Representative David P. Linsky, a Natick Democrat who is proposing it along with Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat. "Whether it be a same-sex marriage or some other kind of marriage, it makes a very clear distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage."
The amendments are among about a dozen that will be offered when the Legislature resumes debate. In three preliminary votes earlier this month, lawmakers approved an amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, while establishing civil unions for same-sex couples with "entirely the same benefits, protections, rights and responsibilities" of marriage. But there is still time for legislators to replace it with a substitute.
Two other proposed amendments became public yesterday: One, offered by Representative Paul J.P. Loscocco, a Holliston Republican, would ban same-sex marriage and create civil unions, but would leave it up to the Legislature to define the rights and privileges associated with civil unions. The other, offered by Representative Viriato Maneul deMacedo, a Plymouth Republican, would split the gay-marriage and civil-union questions into two amendments, an idea floated by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran several weeks ago.
Ronald A. Crews, spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage and a leader in the movement against gay marriage, said his first choice is the Loscocco amendment, but his group could support the deMacedo measure as well.
"To me, that's a much cleaner amendment -- to give the voters a real choice on what to vote on," Crews said. "You can say yes to marriage or no, and you can say yes or no to civil unions."
Arline Isaacson, cochairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said gay-marriage supporters are wholeheartedly opposed to the Loscocco and deMacedo amendments.
"We oppose bifurcation just as strongly as Loscocco and every other anti-gay amendment," she said. "It is simply and totally unacceptable to take away over 1,000 legal protections from our families and expect us to agree or to like one version of doing that over another version."
Isaacson said gay-marriage supporters will adapt their anti-amendment strategy and back the Linsky measure because it preserves same-sex marriage and at the same time "crystallizes into words the importance of marriage and the importance of family and the clear separation of church and state."
Shortly before the March 11 Constitutional Convention, House Republicans handed out a letter, authored by conservative legal scholars, warning that a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman and creating civil unions for same-sex couples would "raise serious religious liberty issues statewide." The letter said the amendment would mean that "churches and other religious organizations that fail to embrace civil unions . . . may be forced to retreat from their practices or else face enormous legal pressure to change their views." 