There is. It’s called the marriage law. There is a law, that defines marriage. Now, that law says “man and woman”. But the Mass. Constitution also says that you can’t discriminate on the basis of sex (something we barely managed to keep out of our federal constitution, thank God).
The Mass. Court, mistakenly I believe but rationally, said that in order to not “discriminate” on the basis of sex, you should be able to substitute “woman” for “man” and vice versa whereever it is found in the law.
And low and behold, the Marriage law has those words “man” and “woman”. The court ruled therefore that the constitution prohibiting sex discrimination meant either sex could qualify as either a man or woman in the marriage law.
They then stayed their ruling, giving the legislature time to change the law, if they wanted. For example, the legislature could have change the law to prohibit all marriages. Or they could have immediately started a constitutional amendment process.
Some people mistakenly think the court was holding off to give the legislature the time to “fix” the law to ALLOW gay marriage. But that is incorrect — the court ruled that the law ALREADY allowed gay marriage, by application of the “substitute male for female” rule.
After 18 months, the legislature had done nothing to change the law so that gays could not marry, so the court’s ruling went into effect.
Of course, Romney could have ordered people to not write marriage licenses. If they didn’t listen to him, he could have fired them. It would have gone to the courts, the courts would have ruled the same way they did before, the marriages would be deemed legal, the firings illegal.
But that didn’t happen, because Mitt instead pushed for a constitutional amendment, which almost made it onto the ballot. Except 4 supporters were turned by the democrats. 4 that might not have been turned if opponents of gay marriage had focused 100% of their energy on keeping the votes they had, instead of attacking Mitt Romney for not improperly opposing the court.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said yesterday he was ready to work with lawmakers to craft a "civil union"-style law to give some marriage rights to homosexual couples, even though he also supports a constitutional amendment to preserve traditional marriage . . . Mr. Romney yesterday told TV news stations that he would support a Vermont-style civil union law in Massachusetts, but reiterated his support for a constitutional amendment that would clarify that "marriage is an institution between a man and a woman." - Washington Times, 11/20/2003
In 2005, Romney tried to tell South Carolina Republicans that he had always opposed civil unions:
Massachusetts Governor Romney is coming under fire for comments he made about gay marriage to Republican activists in South Carolina. Romney told Monday night's gathering in Spartanburg County that he's always been opposed to same-sex marriage as well as what he called "it's equivalent, civil unions." Romney, however, has for months backed a proposed amendment to the Massachusetts constitution that would ban gay marriage but provide for civil unions with the same rights and responsibilities as marriage. Massachusetts State Representative Phil Travis says Romney can't be for civil unions when he's in Massachusetts and against them when he's out-of-state. Travis has been a leading opponent of same-sex unions. - Associated Press, 2/23/2005
Romney strong-armed conservative Republicans into supporting a constitutional amendment that included civil unions:
Through all the twists and shifts during the gay-marriage debate this year, there was one constant: 22 Republicans in the House of Representatives opposed every measure that would grant gay couples civil unions in the constitution. That all changed yesterday, however, when 15 of that 22-member bloc broke away at the urging of Governor Mitt Romney and voted in favor of a proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage but create Vermont-style civil unions. Those 15 members provided the margin of victory, observers from both camps said yesterday after the measure passed by just five votes. In the end, the 15 agreed that approving a measure that they viewed as highly undesirable was preferable to the possibility that nothing would be sent to the state ballot for voters to weigh in on. - Boston Globe 3/30/2004 (Note: This amendment, which included mandated provisions for civil unions, was ultimately defeated in the Legislature and never did go to the voters.)