Contact your Senators and Reps about the Constitutional Convention

[snarkyman]

Yesterday, I contacted both my State Senator and Representative about tomorrow's constitutional convention. You can search for your Senator and Representative on this site:

http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php

I spoke to someone in Senator Shannnon's office directly and sent an email to Representative Marzilli (responded today). Both are voting against the proposed amendment.

Rep.JamesMarzilli@hou.state.ma.us
jim@marzilli.org

Subject: Please vote against the proposed constitutional amendment

9 February 2004

Representative J. James Marzilli, Jr.
State House Room 443
Boston MA 02133

Representative Marzilli -

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I appreciate that you have many constituent issues to respond to every day.

I am one of your constituents in Medford and have voted for you in every election since I moved here in 1996.

I'm writing you about the constitutional convention due to be held Wednesday 11 February 2004 to consider an amendment to ban Gay Marriage in Massachusetts. I encourage you to support the rights of Gay and Lesbian citizens to marry in Massachusetts. Please vote against this constitutional amendment.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in their wisdom, has ruled that the State Constitution, under the Equal Protection Clause, allows for Gay Marriage. I support this position simply as a matter of fairness. I *DO NOT* support a constitutional amendment to ban Gay Marriage.

In a Liberal Democracy, the Judiciary is set up to protect the liberty of the minority from the majority. It is anathema to Liberal Democracy to allow a democratic process to restrict the liberty of a minority. In our Democracy, the majority cannot be allowed to vote to restrict the rights of a minority. Please do not allow this attempt at subverting liberty to go forward.

As I said above, this is simply a matter of fairness and equal protection under the law. One more thing to bare in mind: Gay Marriage is a popular issue. Most of your constituents agree with this position.

I know I can count on your support on this issue.

Thank you.

Bruce Davis

Comments

[noisey.livejournal.com]

I admit to my ignorance, but isn't this just a Massachusetts thing and not a national thing?

[snarkyman.livejournal.com]

Last November, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 5-4 that the state must allow gay marriage. To deny this right is unconstitutional. The court delayed implementation for 180 days to allow the state legislature to put the appropriate laws facilitating gay marriage into place. This ruling also came with the implication that if the legislature did not act, the court would.

The only way to stop gay marriage in Massachusetts would be to amend the state constitution. The earliest this could happen would be late 2006.

[advocacy]
Tomorrow's constitutional convention is the first step in this process, hence the urgency to let our legislators know we don't support this amendment and that they should vote against it.
[/advocacy]

You can find more info here:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=gay+marriage+massachusetts&btnG=Search+News

Note that many of the above links are very negative and predict dire consequences if gay marriage is allowed to proceed.

Re:

[eirehound.livejournal.com]

The next question is: If this constitutional convention approves the amendment, what is the next hurdle it has to clear? Don't know the Commonwealth's constitution, so I don't know the prcedure for amending it.

If the procedure will take at least two years, I find it hard to imagine that a movement based on hatred, fear, and transient passion will be able to maintain steam for that long. Activism based on these emotions tends to be like cesium-133: intensely active and destructive, but with a very short half-life. It takes lots and lots of long-term, persistent struggle to get a constitutional amendment passed.

And let's bear in mind: beginning in May, gays and lesbians in Massachusetts will have marriage. No bullshit, half-measure, separate-but-equal 'civil union' - marriage. The real thing. The genuine article. Man and man, woman and woman. The marriages will exist, they will be seen, they will be real, and I predict that every drop of the dire prophecies will be disproved. The sky will not fall in, not in May 2004, not by May 2005, not by May 2006. What the people of Massachusetts will see is pairs of people united in love as they had already been, their bonds recognized by the state, living perfectly normal lives together. Once those marriages exist, the genie is out of the bottle, folks.

And that is, in the long run, the truest victory. The fact that people will see same-sex marriages not in hysterical fearmongering or wishful dreaming, but in reality, will change the whole shape of the debate. It's easy for the anti-gay-marriage people to paint unrealistic horror stories of same-sex marriage as long as same-sex marriages don't actually exist. Maintaining that illusion in the face of visible examples will be much harder. It seems very likely to me that once May, 2004 has come and gone and the sky hasn't fallen in, and especially once May, 2005 has come and gone and the sky hasn't fallen in, Massachusetts voters will be a lot less likely to listen to those who want to keep gays and lesbians at the back of the bus.

I don't see any likelihood that a constitutional amendment, even if it is enacted, is going to rescind marriage licenses already granted. Given the MA SC's known rulings, that would have to be explicitly written into the amendment and that really, really won't pass muster with the voters. That will mean that same-sex marriages already in existence will continue to exist. People will continue to see those marriages, and see that they are not destroying the concept of marriage, and see that they work, and see that others are now being denied marriage ... and they will remember that constitutional amendments can be repealed as well as enacted.

Constitutional amendments, both at state and federal levels, have a very, very low pass rate. It is very, very hard to get a constitutional amendment enacted. That's by design. Again, I don't know Massachusetts' system, but generally the procedure is designed to forestall amendment attempts based on mob-emotion-appeal - which is exactly what attempts at DOMA-style amendments are.

In short, the sky is not going to fall because of the constitutional convention any more than the sky is going to fall because gays and lesbians are going to be permitted to marry. The DOMA people are risking (and I think getting) a backlash with their strident rhetoric; their shrieking is the sound of people who fear (with good reason) that they have already lost. I think they have already lost.

I hope the rest of us will stay cool, stay the course, and not be like them. We are winning this battle.

Re:

[sapphorlando.livejournal.com]

Marriage in any state is a national issue. Here's why: In the beginning, there were thirteen independent colonies, each one potentially a fully independent nation. At the time, however, they were all chartered under a single authority, the Crown of England. The Continental Congress was organised to allow these colonies to do business with each other, settle disputes, and so on, without having to constantly badger the Crown all the time. This eventually allowed them to organise together in military to overthrow the Crown's authority. But until final ratification of the Constitution in 1787, they remained essentially independent states.

Although many Americans today do not perceive it, much of the system of federation is designed to allow orignally independent states to operate together efficiently. Among the many federal legal provisions towards this end is the understanding that states must respect each other's marriages. Marriage laws are purview to the States, and every state has different laws about it -- age of consent, qualifying requirements, degree of familial separation and so on. Without this provision, no one would ever be completely sure if they were legally married or not as they travel from one state to another, unless they happened to have an up-to-date databank on every state's marriage laws.

Therefore, gay marriage in one state is gay marriage in any state, under the law. This is why the use of the word 'marriage' is so important, because it conveys a unique legal status that no other terminology can. (A Vermont civil union, for examle, means nothing outside of Vermont.) The various DOMA laws are intended to get around this, but are probably unconstitutional. One reason that gay marriage opponents are so adamant is that they fear that if any state enacts gay marriage, it will shatter all of these laws across the land.

I don't see Commonwealth citizens stomaching this thing two years from now, but I do worry that the fight for it will create longstanding injury to the integrity and unity of the electorate. About the only thing that could really stop gay marriage in Massachusetts is the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment.

Re:

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing such a clear and succinct explanation. I knew it was important and would have repercussions across the nation, but not how it all worked.