Posted on 06/14/2007 10:28:31 AM PDT by GQuagmire
A joint session of the Legislature swiftly defeated a constitutional ban on gay marriage by a vote of 151 to 45, eliminating any chances of getting it on the ballot in November 2008
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The three leaders - along with gay rights activists - spent the last several days intensely lobbying a dozen or more state representatives and state senators who had previously supported the amendment but signaled that they were open to changing their positions.
Because fewer than 50 of the state's 200 lawmakers supported the amendment, it will not appear on the 2008 ballot, giving gay marriage advocates a major victory in their battle with social conservatives to keep same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts.
Opponents of gay marriage face an increasingly tough battle to win legislative approval of any future petitions to appear on a statewide ballot. The next election available to them is 2012.
Mitt’s legacy?
The homosexual agenda is incompatible with our democracy, period.
More business as usual at Mass. State House
I can’t wait to see who flipped and what the payout was.
If Mitt Romney had dedicated himself to his job, this amendment would have been on its way to the ballot.
I hope his Presidential race was worth it.
Classic Massachusetts.
Wonder what kind of goodies they got for changing their votes.
I’ve heard that before. I certainly can’t blame Mitt for the lousy MA courts, but he did not appear to do too much to fight this thing.
And now for the persecution of those who backed the ban.
Doesn’t have anything to do with Romney.....it’s the lowlifes in the legislature..........
Uh . . . no.
Howie Carr will follow up with those few who flipped from the last vote to see what their payoff was.
It was actually Bill Weld who appointed Margaret Marshall to the bench.
If the voters of Massachusetts are too liberal, lazy or just clueless to keep returning these same bozos to office at every election, they’re going to deserve what they get.
Bill Weld. A superb RINO.
I agree, and might add that there is absolutely no reason for me or my family to ever travel to or through Massachusetts.
amen.
What a disgrace. I’m so glad I got out of Mass when I did. Theses slimebags make NJ look conservative.
And they're Romney's fault. While Romney spent millions of dollars on Republican campaigns across the country in 2006, he spent not one dime to help Massachusetts Republicans.
As a result, there are practically no conservatives in the state leg -- in fact, in 2006 the Rainbow-Green Party fielded more candidates in Massachusetts than the GOP, because Romney made sure that the Mass GOP was bankrupt.
If he had done his part, it would have been easy to get 5 more votes to put this thing on the ballot. Instead, Romney dropped the ball.
Wonder what kind of goodies they got for changing their votes.
If there are any,they will be reported to the US attorney(A Republican BTW).Gay marriage ban groups have said the will be watching to see down the road who switched their votes from previous ConCon votes.
Bears repeating. Can we expand that to the voters of the United States?
Increase of the exodus out of MA. Increase in children being pulled from public schools. Increase in folks allowing their properties to go into foreclosure rather than sell them and help the MA economy. Increases in homes that don’t sell. Increase in disgruntled voters.
Decrease in tourism. Decrease in spending in MA. Decrease in revenue from conventions (empty convention centers) Decrease in businesses operating or opening in MA.
Lose/Lose situation! All the way around. Where socialism/communism reigns, the economy/standard of living decline rapidly.
All US Attorneys are Republicans.
Just see how many of their relatives get appointed as judges or to no-show jobs at state agencies.
The House of Reprehensibles. The best Legislature that money can buy.
The Knights of Columbus will be high on that list.
You are right. What’s worse, he didn’t even help lobby these reps to hold firm to their previous votes. Thanks, Mitt.
Oh I know massgop, and that is so sad! I have a brother who works for a huge company who had their convention in Boston, and has said no way ever again.
That ain’t the half of it boys and girls.It was set up if they DID NOT have the votes there would be no vote today.
If they had the votes. they WOULD vote today.As of last nite they didn’t have the votes.
So it would never come to a vote if they didn’t have the votes to win.
Typical Mass. ass politics.
This F’n state sucks.
Just wow. The Democrats who claim to want everything decided by the voters and ballot, deny the citizens of Massachusetts a vote on this.
How freaking hypocritical - but typical - of the RAT party.
Unfortunately if the federal courts decide to overturn the federal DOMA because of the full faith & credit clause of the U.S. Constitution (very good chance), we will all get what they force on us.
The leadership are Democrats, but there were Republicans who voted to keep this off the ballot. In fact, there are quite a few Dems who were real heroes in this fight.
I’m talking in particular of Patrick and the Democrat leaders strongarm tactics. Nothing will excuse this. They knew how many votes they needed and they did what they needed to to make sure it stayed off the ballot.
By saying Republicans voted to keep it off the ballot too doesn’t excuse the repulsive behavior by the Democrat hierarchy.
Just like they say they want states' rights when they are opposing the federal marriage amendment (which would have done nothing more than ban the judges from legislating and left the legislators free to do the worst they could think of with exception to using the word marriage so that the differences between different state laws could remain clear to all), but when the issue is argued in federal court, they claim the federal constitution demands approval of all things homosexual. Then they go even further and try to make being homosexual special with extra federal protections (ENDA and hate crimes legislation).
Just like they vote to ban PBA but are then outraged when the Supreme Court upholds the ban.
Back to marriage and states' rights, you can't really call something a state issue that reaps so many federal benefits anyway. And ever since Utah was forced to ban polygamy, the fundamental definition of marriage has always been a federal issue in this country. The Federal Marriage Amendment was a compromise that actually benefited homosexuals and retreated from our nation's history. I would have settled for that, but not the liberals. They want to squeeze it into the shadows of the existing constitution right alongside abortion and sodomy.
This is from the Boston Herald:
“Among lawmakers who switched from previous support of the ban were state Reps. James Vallee (D-Franklin), Brian Wallace (D-South Boston), Richard Ross (R-Wrentham), Robert Nyman (D-Hanover) and Paul Loscocco (R-Holliston), among others. Senators who switched included Gale Candaras (D-Wilbraham)and state Sen. Michael Morrissey (D-Quincy).”
My Republican representative switched.
Hell for 1 vote Red Sox box seats for the next Yankees series will do the trick.
You may be right about that; they're getting cheaper to buy off these days. Reminds me of the old punch line about the Man about Town who propositions a Lady of the Evening. She accepts his advances, upon which he offers her only one dollar for her services. When she protests: "What kind of a girl do you think I am!?" he replies: "We've already established what you are, Miss; now were simply haggling over the price".
I am once again overjoyed that I no longer live in the PRM. If your lawmaker had been mine, I would be tempted to call him and ask if he were interested in marrying my pet donkey. If he asked why I’d wanted him to do such a thing, I’d reply that I just want to see him kiss my ass.
True, I would have preferred to vote on the issue, as I think the people who championed the initiative proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that people wanted to vote on the issue, and that the system circumvented this vote through back-room political maneuvering. But I feel that way because of the political process, and that would be true of any ballot initiative, not simply this one. Homosexual marriage? Who gives a sh*t.
I care a whole lot less about the actual “marriages” than I do about the repercussions that follow. There are school districts in the state that are now indoctrinating school children as young as five and telling them that when they grow up they can marry either a boy or a girl.
I hear you, and I believe it's our duty, as conservative people, to instill in our children the conservative values that will prevent this from being an indoctrination, and make it, rather, a trickling of information akin to "grass is green." You can marry a boy or a girl? Wonderful. You can also jump off a bridge. Would you?
He said something to that effect in 1994 when he ran for the senate against Kennedy. What he meant was discrimination in jobs, housing, etc. At the time gay marriage wasn’t on the radar here.
“Homos or dykes marrying each other has no effect on my life whatsoever... Homosexual marriage? Who gives a sh*t.”
Let’s change the wording a little. I’ll replace homosexual marriage with poverty and clean up your language.
“Poverty? Who cares about poverty? It has no effect on my life whatsoever.”
It is useful, in other words, to care about things beyond your own backyard.
The reason why so few homosexuals/lesbians bother to get married is because they want to use marriage as a wedge to achieve the rest of their agenda. They are not interested in marriage for its own sake. For example,
Michelangelo Signori, a gay writer and journalist, advocates:
“fight(ing) for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefin(ing) the institution of marrige completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution that as it now stands keeps us down. The most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake - and one that would perhaps benefit all of society - is to transform the notion of “family” entirely.” “Bridal Wave,” “Out” magazine, Dec./January, 1994, p. 1-D
Notice how he says, “one that would perhaps benefit all of society”. Perhaps it wouldn’t, but who cares?
A little more recently (Sept. 3 - 9, 2003) in the Village Voice, Richard Goldstein wrote in a piece called “The Radical Case for Gay Marriage” that
“Both feminism and gay liberation and developed a potent critique of matrimony, exposing its relationship to repression and patriarchal privilege... Generations of radicals have imagined a world in which the norm-making rules of matrimony are suspended - or at least loosened to suit the way people actually live.” I have no idea what “the way people actually live” refers to. It probably refers to how writers for the “Village Voice” live.
What I don’t entirely get is why they don’t leave marriage alone. They already have the freedom to engage in whatever sexual relationship they want. That’s not good enough for them. They continually attack something that provides the best possible environment for kids. They deny that it provides the best possible environment for kids. They don’t seem to understand that if they “educate” the rest of us to want sexual anarchy, anarchy generally leads to greater repression. Anarchy does not work as social policy. “Gay” rights advocates and feminists actually have no idea at all of what will happen if traditional marriage collapses.
Your analogy makes little sense, since poverty effects me only if I am poor, I am attacked for my possessions by someone who is poor, or my property is robbed from me by the government to be redistributed to those who are poor. The latter have little to do with poverty; but much to do with people who take it upon themselves to play the social engineer. In that I am not poor (by the grace of God), poverty, therefore, in and of itself, does not effect me.
Marriage is an "institution," true, but in essence, that institution is made up of the common elements of millions, if not billions, of extremely personal and intimate relationships between individuals. My first marriage, for example, had little, if anything, in common with my marriage now---and my relationship with my wife is certainly not influenced by my neighbor's relationship with his wife, or my other neighbor's relationship with his wife, or the relationship between my two neighbors who lived with each other before they were married.
I submit that the ability of one homosexual to marry another homosexual legally, in the state of Massachusetts, has done absolutely nothing to "normalize" homosexuality. The nature of a homosexual relationship matters very little, since what makes homosexuality abnormal is the very existence of a sexual relationship between people of the same sex. The fact that homosexual relationships can now be thought of---quite flimsily, at that---in this quasi-legal manner is hardly something to promote homosexuality as a lifestyle to those not inclined towards homosexuality themselves.
So we're to sweat over this one tiny fraction of a minority? We're really that fearful for our society? We really want to deprive our fellow men and women the tiny bit of happiness they might derive from thinking of themselves as married?
Disgusting!!!!
Nyman is the worst offender. He actually ran for office as a pro-traditional marriage candidate. THUMBS DOWN ON ALL!
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