Actually, when the 6 months expired without the legislature doing anything to fix the law to prohibit same-sex marriage, Romney sent letters enforcing the law as it had now been interpreted by the courts.
It is a common mistake some make to think that the court wasted everybody’s time by issuing a ruling that did nothing, and that the legislature HAD to act to make gay marriage legal.
The opposite is true — the court ruled that the existing Mass. law as interpreted by their view of the constitution required gay marriage, but STAYED that ruling for 6 months to give the legislature time to change the law if the legislature wanted to correct the law so it still prohibited gay marriage.
The courts used the logic that the term “man” and “woman” should each be interpreted inclusively. Theoretically, the law could have been fixed by changing the terms to “male” and “female”, terms that had not been de-genderized by “common law”.
I strongly disagree with the court’s ruling, but their interpretation of the words in the law effectively made the law as it existed a “gay marriage” law.
That of course is why, when the court made their ruling, every media outlet reported that they had legalized gay marraige, and every conservative organization sent out e-mails decrying the court’s ruling as legalizing gay marriage.
It is fascinating to see that, years later, some people want to ignore the evidence and the history we all lived through and suggest that the opposite was true.
The legislature refused to fix the law to prohibit gay marriage, and when the people asked for a referendum, they couldn’t get 25% of the legislature to allow it — 75% of the people elected in Mass. were FOR gay marriage.
The idea that the judiciary is supreme is common nonsense. That idea is profoundly ahistorical and utterly at odds with constitutional principle, in Massachusetts and every other American jurisdiction. If the law means whatever a majority of the highest court says it means and the executive exists just to effectuate court orders, there isn't much point in carefully separating powers among the three branches of government. We might as well just save ourselves all those executive and legislative salaries and let the courts run everything. Constitutions could be a lot shorter.
Faced with a stark choice between faithfully executing the law and obeying a lawless court an honorable executive is bound by the law. Courts don't issue marriage licenses in Massachusetts. That's an executive function. Romney chose to allow his employees to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. That was his bad and he can't escape responsibility for it. The defense that the SJC made him do it is just pathetic.
If Romney had defied the court he might have been impeached or the legislature might have amended the law to conform with the SJC’s decision. Either way two branches of government could have combined to overrule the third. Or the legislature could have accepted Romney's decision and rejected the court's. That's separation of powers in action, three branches of government in a dynamic balance.
As it was, Romney punted, like the putz he is. He punted on health care too, and apparently he has yet to see the error of his ways. The man is a waste of good hair. If he tries to pimp himself around again in 2012 he won't even get as far as he did last time. It would be a pleasure to watch him waste another chunk of his fortune in more futile efforts to ingratiate himself with the electorate. Voters, like nature, abhor a vacuum