This is the democracy, however, that the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have voted for, and these are the rules of the game.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
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Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
This is the democracy, however, that the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have voted for, and these are the rules of the game.
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It’s called representation. Why have a legislature?
It seems to me that following the rules, in this case unless 50 reps say it should go on the ballot it doesn’t go on the ballot, is supporting democracy.
Rules are important, even if we sometimes disagree on how the results turn out.
You’re right, and I am sure you recognize that I said, ultimately, the same thing. It’s always an interesting question as to whether, why and when a question will be put to the voters, but it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. In fact this vote was probably braver than a vote to just punt to a referendum.
As a citizen of California, where all it takes to get an initiative on the ballot is a large number of signatures, I find Massachussets’ rules for initiatives to be highly cumbersome and undemocratic.
But they are the rules.
It’s worth noting that if voters had wanted to vote against gay marriage, they could have elected representatives that would vote against bills like this. They didn’t: they elected a bunch of Democrats and a Democratic Governor instead.
The Massachusetts legislature had to vote on this twice in two consecutive sessions. In the first session, the vote was 134-62. In the second session, it was 151-45. Which means that support for the amendment *decreased* between the sessions.
Not only that, but I find it hard to believe a referendum result would come out differently. Any poll numbers on that?
According to Boston.com, as of 2005:
“Overall, 56 percent of those surveyed backed same-sex marriage, while 37 percent did not and 7 percent weren’t sure.”
Vic, it would be interesting to see if those numbers have shifted over the last two years, but I can’t find any data on it.
That said, my friends who live in Massachusetts were worried that an actual election on the subject would be hard-fought and lead to much mudslinging and other unpleasantness.
Well Ron, if you think the action in Mass. was both fair and democratic, perhaps your post was poorly titled.
This also seems like something of a blow to the idea that court cases are necessarily a horrible way to start off this process. In the case of Mass, the turnover from the state being against it to it being a reality has been pretty quick.
Dale Carpenter has a pretty good summary of this on volokh right now. We’ve gone from the public opposing it and only a third of the state leg supporting it to thousands and thousands of actual gay marriages with no sign of a collapsing society, a public that does not want to do away with it, and now only 45 state leg people willing to vote to try and get rid of it. This may have caused a backlash of amendments in other states, but none of those states were anywhere close to giving gay people marriage rights regardless. And now we have living breathing gay marriage in one state where before there was none… and more and more other states moving to expand rights for gay couples to boot. It’s probably too soon to call as a tactic, but without the court case, I’m pretty sure there would be no gay marriages at all in the country in any case. What happened in Mass catalyzed the debate: sure it brought out plenty of anti-gay marriage movement as well, but it also got a heck of a lot done where little headway and public attention had been there before.
Vic: I disagree, to one extent.
The California legislature has now twice passed a gay marriage bill; it was vetoed once, and probably will be again, on the grounds that it conflicts with a ballot measure adopted because of court cases in other states.
Absent the court strategy, that measure may well not have been there, and the support in the legislature would likely have been.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s not clear that the drive or courage from many of those legislatures really would have been there if the issue hadn’t been raised and fought over first, and it took some real action to actually get that debate out there and people to take sides and push for it for real. Yes it inspired people to push against it, and they had some victories as well. But that was inevitable: you can’t have gay marriage in ANY way without those people finding some reason to get outraged and having all sorts of attacks against it. If it wasn’t one thing it would be another.
Look at it this way Vic. Pass an initiative, make it the law and dem CA legislators will still be shoving it down the throats of the voters one way or the other.
Or a better tactic is to get 100 Mayor Newsomes to violate the law and do 4000 fake marriages.
Yes, I too favor the right of people to petition government by means of referenda.
But I agree with the assessment of the Massachusetts situation by Michael Demmons and Robert West. Why indeed have a representative state legislature, if its decisions can be overturned by referenda not infrequently driven by our unique american combination of bias and demagoguery?
I’m not at all either a liberal, Democrat, or even concerned with human rights to the extent that many of you preach.
But I will say, again and again, that we cannot have two classes of citizens in this great commonwealth, separated in terms of their access to common rights by the sexually-related preferences or genetic predispositions. The homosexuals of this country presumably pay their share of the national, state and local taxe burdens.
I therefore can find no overriding reason why their right to privacy in the way they choose to exercize their sexuality ought to be respected. At least if it is shown that their preferences, predispositions and practices solely involve persons who have reached the societally defined age of consent; which I understand is not at all in question here for most homosexuals.
All too often, we in this country have conducted policy based mainly on mass hysteria.
You think otherwise? Think of national prohibition against liquor, and how that came about. Think about the instant anti-German mood of american society in 1917 that oot us into a world war, followed almost instantly by the isolationism that kept us from stopping in its tracks an even nastier set of international threats only 20 years later. I can still remember the pro-Soviet mood of the american nation in 1942-1945. And I can remember equally well the anti-communist hysteria that began shortly after the war ended.
Let’s all begin thinking things out more clearly before we contribute to yet another national mass hysteria, this one over homosexuals. They either are Americans like the rest of us, with rights that the rest of us take for granted, or some day many more of us might find ourselves targeted with efforts to deny our rights along with theirs.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold,
Fine, but you do leave out a few laws and some cogent perceptions. Firstly, we aren’t talking privacy issues. Secondly, in California, the initiative issues have largely been brought to the fore because the legislature and the Governor have refused to deal with hot button issues. Not necessarily Schwarzenegger but his predecessors. Then, again, initiatives that pass are state law.
Is it the function of the legislators to ignore those initiatives ? Thirdly, no one is getting hysterical since legislative matters are long, drawn out, and consensus undertakings. And the voters have the right to participate. How do you claim hysteria for an issue that has been around 20 years ?
And, why do the benefits and entitlements they claim have to be at the expense of marriage law ?
They cannot reproduce without benefit of a third party, their offspring are always at least one bio parent short, and there can be no marital communion of opposites, merely sexual contact.
They wish to call that marriage and you don’t care. Beautiful.
When you have rapid social changes guess who loses out ? Not the adults. The children become the losers. Have you looked around the neighborhood and seen the struggles of the single parent’s with two children lately ?
Not to diminish Michael’s rihgts, but you’ll notice he’s been lurking and not entering the discussions. He’s not a citizen but he wants his rihgts.
McKiernan: I am also gay; the rights in question would apply to me, as well.
Arnold: the legislature can be captured by special interests; the initiative exists as the only realistic check on the power of money to control the politicians. In California’s history, it was adopted because it was the only way to get certain legislation past politicians who were dependant for their re-election on money provided to them by the railroad.
There are problems with the initiative system, and California’s use of it verges on abuse. But the obstacles Massachusetts places in front of those citizens who wish to change the system are too high for my taste.
Surely, Robert, you’re not telling us that Prop 22, the California Marriage initiative which passed in 52 of 58 counties in 2000, was an abuse ?
A reasonable collection of words, but hardly an honest collection of words. Was gay marriage even mentioned or debated in the last election? I seriously doubt it was.
Here in New Hampshire the Democrats campaigned on Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and Sex Offenders, Sex Offenders, Sex Offenders. Once in office we get Civil Unions, a seat-belt law, and a passive acceptance of a court takeover of school funding that will inevitably result in a court-imposed income or sales tax. The state senate is making a brave show of trying to stave that off, but it’s just a show- they are aching for the money a broad-based tax will bring in so they can finally “Do Something!” about things they never mentioned in their campaign speeches.
The “elect different representatives” argument rings pretty hollow.
And the funny thing is, if they HAD let the amendment come to a vote, it almost certainly would have been rejected- a far, far more powerful statement than a bunch of lying legislators dodging a bullet.
Instead, this issue will be raised again, and again, and again in Massachusetts, for at least the next ten years when it could have been settled with overwhelming finality in 2008.
McK,
Surely you don’t think any two given people on this earth cannot have a lifetime of companionship, respect, and even love, even if such a lifetime produces no offspring?
As a heterosexual, I could not think of spending a life without the children my wife and I produced and raised to adulthood.
But I do not make the mistake of assuming that homosexuals have any particular need of the presence of children. And if they in fact have no such need, should be judge them any the worse for it?
Why can’t we just let loose of this seemingly endless need to compel these people to view life and the world around them from our particular perspectives?
Western civilization has had homosexuality in its midst from the time of its very origins thousands of years ago. While it surely is not normative in a heterosexual society, maybe — just maybe — it is not as unnatural as so many of us imagine.
I don’t wish to give the impression that I am trying to fit homosexuality into some sort of some sort of taxonomy, the way I have been doing with various religions for some time now.
But I have thought about all of this at some length. In order to deny homosexuals their equal rights as citizens, you have to condition yourself to both fear and hate them. And I do neither.
And it certainly never has been any sense of liberalism that taught me to think this way. Because throughout my 73 years, I never have been a liberal. Instead, I want them to have their rights because if such rights can be withheld from homosexuals, they can be withdrawn from people like me as an unbeliever, or people like you and Dean as old and new Catholics. Find one point of societal cleavage, and it may enable someone or some social force to fracture our already fragile society in other and perhaps unplanned ways.
We have had many a running argument on these pages, McK. But in the course of that, I always have judged you a thoughtful person. So think on what I have posited here. Especially for a person like you. Because if the homosexuals of the world do not have the love of Christ and his mother, regardless of their sexuality, then what has your Church taught you all these years?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And just to be clear: this “Republican from birth mistruster of government” doesn’t give a rat’s ass about who or what you marry so long as it’s a marriage that carries the force of law, binds the parties in a social contract EXACTLY identical to all other legal marriages, and provides for state intervention in divorces just like breeder marriages.
Let the divorce lawyers rejoice.
McKiernan: no, I don’t think that was abuse. I voted against it, and don’t approve, but it was not an abuse of the system, and it was perfectly legitimate.
I think the cases where identical ballot measures are on ballots in subsequent years, despite having been defeated, are abuses. :)
“The “elect different representatives” argument rings pretty hollow. ”
I don’t see how. Supporting gay marriage is something that the Democrats in Mass have in their party platform.
And again, I don’t remember you screaming bloody murder over various Republican administrations passing laws they didn’t campaign on either. Somehow its only antidemocratic when its something you don’t like.
Arnold,
All I can present are my views from my perspective and my experience. I know two homosexuals severely disillusioned with the gay_marriage dream.
One is now a single parent with two children to raise. And the other, is a 40 year old depressed man whose entire marriage lasted all of fourteen months that has an additional 100,000 dollar increase on his mortgage due to what can loosely be called his marriage indebtedness.
On the other hand, my relative and her partner enjoy a quiet life unencumbered by homosexual hostility from family and friends with no political agendas.
In addition, neither has abandoned their religious faith nor have complaints about their (cough) rights.
There is a saying in the I Ching:
Grace brings progress. It is advantageous to have a goal in mind only in small matters.
I think the cases where identical ballot measures are on ballots in subsequent years, despite having been defeated, are abuses. :)
You must be talking about the local school boards
endless bond measures every single election for more
$$$$$$.
Let’s call it “provocatively titled”! ;-)
McKiernan: oddly, i’m not talking about bond measures. I no longer remember the specifics and am too lazy at the moment to look them up, but there was a case this decade where a measure failed in one election and an *identical measure* was put on the ballot in the following election.
“We already said no to this, *******.”
Vic-
You haven’t clue one what my political stances are, what I’ve approved of, disapproved of or (beyond the liberation of Iraq) whole-heartedly supported. In short your assertion regarding my lack of outrage is a collection of meaningless noises, devoid of any substance.
Other than the above, yeah, I see your point…
Are you going to reply Arnold or was your comment just a homily ?
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