Posted on 07/30/2002 9:09:34 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Due Process Is Dead in Massachusetts.
“It being the public policy of this Commonwealth to protect the unique relationship of marriage in order to promote, among other goals, the stability and welfare of society and the best interests of children, only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts. Any other relationship shall not be recognized as a marriage or its legal equivalent, nor shall it receive the benefits or incidents exclusive to marriage from the Commonwealth, its agencies, departments, authorities, commissions, offices, officials and political subdivisions. Nothing herein shall be construed to effect an impairment of a contract in existence as of the effective date of this amendment.”
For the last week, I have been reeling with images from the July 17th travesty in the Massachusetts state house, when a special constitutional convention met for the third time in as many months to consider a proposed amendment that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Senate president Tom Birmingham (who is running a dwindling campaign for governor of this state) had said earlier in the week and again that morning that he was going to do “everything in my power to stop this mean-spirited and hateful issue from coming to a vote.” This time, he got someone else to do his dirty work: Brian P. Lees (R-Springfield), the senate minority leader, moved to adjourn the meeting before the amendment could be addressed. 137 members voted to adjourn; 53 voted not to adjourn. Fifty votes were required to carry the issue of the Amendment to the ballot—which obviously could have carried easily, leaving the question of what a marriage is—or is not—up to the voters of this state in 2004.
More than 130,000 voters signed the Protection of Marriage Amendment petition in the fall of 2001. 76,607 of those signatures were certified. 57,100 certified signatures were required in order for the petition to come before the constitutional convention. According to the Massachusetts Family Institute, 83% of Massachusetts voters polled agree that marriage is important to the family, and 60% support defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
On July 17th, I went to the state house to be present for (I presumed) an historic vote. Before I went into the State House, I stood for about a half hour with about sixty staff and volunteers for the Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage for a nearly silent rally. Some of us stood and chatted and others held up signs that said, “Let the People Vote for Marriage in 2004.” And most of us watched somewhat warily as homosexuals and lesbians harassed members of our group. At around 1:15, I went into the State House.
I couldn´t get near the gallery. The doors were closed until about 1:50, but there must have been 750 people in the house chamber area ahead of me, perhaps 250 pro-homosexual rights supporters to the rest of us who favor traditional values. The senators entered the chamber at 2:00 pm. At 2:17, they strolled out with smug smirks on their faces. Opponents of the amendment erupted into cheers, and the rest of us into boos and hisses. Almost immediately, there was a frenzy of sympathetic media interviews with lesbian members of the Massachusetts congress, and their supporters—and then the taunting and jeering began. The Marriage Amendment, for all intents and purposes, was dead. And we all knew it.
The only pro-marriage supporter I know of who made it onto the news that night was a black woman who took issue with a sign that pronounced, “We want OUR civil rights!” When she challenged that statement and was verbally assaulted, she lost her temper and was ushered out of the building by armed guards. The whole episode was filmed; what made it onto the news that evening was the woman being taken out, loud with rage, her little boys in tow. Some of us were standing outside the capitol afterward, pondering the whole mess as we waited for busses to take us back to the places where we had gathered for this momentous day. A homosexual came along and began reviling us. We were silent in response. He then sighted the black woman and got very in-your-face with her, his nose possibly a foot away from hers. He spoke in low, seething tones. We could not hear him, but her demeanor made it pretty obvious that he was being extremely unpleasant to her. The busses came along and the woman and her children crossed Beacon Street—and he walked beside her, puffing smoke into her face and muttering at her the entire time. None of us (including I, shamefully) did anything to try to stop him.
My own involvement with the Protection of Marriage Amendment began when I signed the petition at my local grocery store last fall. I asked for copies and carried them around with me to collect more signatures, rather surprised at how many people were willing to sign it. Very few I asked did not.
After the first constitutional convention met on May 8th of this year to discuss the Amendment, as required by the Massachusetts Constitution, and then closed without a vote, a friend who works for Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage called and asked if I would contact the voters in my town who had signed the petition, and ask them to contact our state senator and representative in support of the Amendment. I said yes, and began calling a few days later. Again, I was amazed at the responses: about a third of those I spoke to, while they had signed the petition, were reluctant to call Ms Walrath or Mr. Antonioni. They expressed concerns about voicing their opinions on such a “controversial” matter to their elected officials. The other two-thirds assured me that they would.
On June 19th, the date of the next special constitutional convention to consider the Marriage Amendment, I took a few hours of personal time from work and met my friend at the State House for the vote. When I arrived at the Boston Common, the meeting place for volunteers from the Mass Citizens for Marriage, I was surprised that there weren´t more people there, including, apparently, members of the opposition. I was told that my friend was already inside, so I hurried through the security area into the State House and went to the House gallery where she and her two little sons, aged two and five, were waiting. I sat down next to them.
It was about 1:15. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 2:00.
Although there was one kind guard in the gallery, as we waited for the vote, some of the other guards became verbally abusive. One woman guard in particular was unkind to an MCM staff member seated in front of me. The guard poked her shoulder to get attention, and poked it so hard that the woman winced and rubbed it as she turned to her. The guard spoke provokingly to her, threatening to remove her if she distributed any badges, and then said that she must remove the bag of badges or be ejected from the gallery. After a moment of discussion, a male guard joined them, the staff member said she would not distribute anything (she had not done so to that point) and the guards withdrew. [Most of us in the gallery were already wearing the badges, which said only, “Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage.”]
My friend seemed uncharacteristically quiet and when I asked why, told me of an incident that had just happened to a friend of hers as she was walking into the state house. A group of homosexuals and lesbians approached and began threatening her and the others with her, tormenting them with anti-religious slurs. The attempts met with no response. One of the activists then centered on her and tried more aggressively to get her to respond, verbally abusing her until she was in tears. When she said nothing, the activist spat, “I hope your children choke and die in front of you!”
And we´re called “mean-spirited and hateful?”
At the rally last Wednesday, homosexual and lesbian members of their media (mostly unidentified members, unless we asked them) milled among us asking questions and photographing us. While I was speaking with the brave man who exposed the Fistgate scandal some time back, a photographer from the Bay Windows ("New England's Largest Gay and Lesbian Newspaper") recognized him and began snapping photos of him and then of me, standing only about three or four feet away and zooming in with her lens. She took one after another, until he asked her to stop and said he really thought two was more than enough. She went on to someone else.
Before I entered the capitol building a few minutes later, I was approached by a young man and woman who identified themselves as members of the Homosexual Communist Media. He thrust a microphone into my face and asked why I was there. I did not speak well or smoothly to them, but I did speak: I told them I was there in support of the marriage Amendment. He asked why I supported it, and I told him, and also mentioned that more than 80% of voters polled in Massachusetts felt that [heterosexual] marriage was important to the family structure, and that 60% favored defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
The young man cut me off instantly, “Oh! So you´re in favor of mob rule!”
I frowned and said quietly, “That´s not mob rule—”
“Well, then, call it educated mob rule!”
I frowned again, waved him away and said, “I have nothing left to say to you.”
Before I left him, he insisted that I take a flier for the Homosexual Communist Media. I gave him one of ours, which he refused, but instead of throwing his away, I decided to read it. I´m glad I did. It began:
“The Homosexual Communist Media is an art collective based in Amsterdam. We have just founded a Boston faction, to begin subverting American morality and social culture...” (The italics are mine.)
Had I thought a little quicker, I would have said to him,
“You´re too late. It´s happened already.”
If so-called "conservatives" spent half as much energy seeking to dismantle the mechanisms by which homosexuals advance their agenda (public schools, and other socialist abominations) as they spent in self-righteous indignation over homosexuals themselves... homosexuals would have nothing left with which to advance their agenda....
(and the world would be a better place for it)
Do you mean that a "right" is anything someone can do physically, as long as that act doesn't interfere with the "rights" of others? I really don't understand what you said; I am just trying to get a grasp of it.
Ah, but allowing homosexual marriage does infringe upon my rights. Because then I have to pay taxes to the state for benefits to homosexual state-employees. I have to pay taxes to support a child welfare service that supports homosexual adoptions. And I also have to pay higher medical premiums when insurance companies are forced to recognize homosexual marriage.
And in a less concrete fashion, homosexual marriage brings with it a severe coarsening of the culture, and a hatred of many of the values that I hold dear.
I have debated this issue from your standpoint - from an entirely utilitarian, secular perspective that assumes the state exists as an entirely neutral entity with no moral value of its own, beyond a definition of "the rights of man." I'll be happy to give you another argument as to why homosexual marriage is a travesty, and a potential disaster to the health of nation.
or in the words of Mr. Jefferson....
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
--Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.
You seem to be using one government wrong (socialism) in an attempt to defend another.
I'm sure it will appeal to, oh, eight or ten other knuckledraggers at least.
Thanks for playing our game...
We've got some lovely parting gifts for you.
Not unless you accept the moral legitimacy of government socialism (which I do not).
The only means available for homosexuals to violate your rights, involve government socialism.
In the absence of these immoral socialistic programs, no such mechanism exists.
If you have some other means in your mind... please share it, and I'll debunk it.
Stunning display of rationality.
Next.
Realizing, that this comment was not addessed to me, doesn't prevent me from commenting on it...as we have done for years here.
It seems that you are arguing that social conventions should dictate law....mini-skirts, topless bikinis, prohibition, Elvis, McCarthy Era, Jim Crowe Laws, etc....were all social conventions at one time or the other.
Rights should be immutable...wouldn't you think?
This nation has the moral authority because this nation is a Republic, and the people have granted it that moral authority.
You might have rather asked why it should have such authority. It should have such authority because this state can not exist without a firm family foundation upon which to rest. Something called America (or Massachusetts) might continue, but it would not be what it has been up to now.
Those of us interested in preserving our nation (rather than just looking out for ourselves) will continue to argue for the state's interest being served by a common morality, which does not include letting sickos live together and calling it a marriage.
Shalom.
So the fact that the majority of the citizens of Germany supported the actions of the Third Reich, meant that the actions of the Third Reich were morally legitimate?
Maybe you want to rethink that.
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