“But the MA Court was not infringing on the MA Legislature’s role in legislating. It was ruling on the law’s state constitutionality. That is in within its role to do.”
I’m not mixing anything up. I am stating my opinion that the action of the Massachusetts court was a violation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which gives power over matters of marriage to the legislature, just as the US Supreme Court overstepped its power in wrongly striking down DOMA.
The illogic of your position can be readily demonstrated even with reference only to your comment. If the people of Massachusetts amend the constitution as you suggest to say that all matters of marriage are to be decided by the legislature and further they add that the Court shall not perform the role of the legislature, and therefore the court should “butt out” of marriage issues (all of which the Massachusetts Constitution already says, by the way), and then the court still strikes down the same act of the legislature, would that be “within its role to do”?
Its role, in fact, is a creature of the Massachusetts Cosntitution. What powers that Constitution does not grant it, it does not have.
As an aside, with no Marbury vs. Madison in Massachusetts, what makes you so certain that the Massachusetts Constituion gives the court the power to strike down acts of the legislature? The Massachusetts Constitution has a provision providing that the Court can give advisory opinion to other branches of government, but whether this gives them the power to strike down other branches acts is not clear at all, although as you could expect, it is not something that the Court itself sees as debatable.
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1308&context=asml
Or are you just assuming that all courts, under all constitutions have the final say on the constitutionality of the acts of the other branches?
Have Mass voters amended their state constitution to define marriage?