THE AMENDMENT IS COLLAPSING

The proposed constitutional amendment in Massachusetts – to take back marriage rights and replace them with identical but re-named “civil unions” – looks like it will never make it to the voters. More “judicial tyranny”? Nope. A legislature, answerable to voters, has decided to punt on it, it seems. The voters don’t want it; every incumbent who opposed the amendment last year was re-elected; some of those who supported the amendment lost their seats. But what’s interesting is that a second amendment is emerging that will try again. But this time, it will be an honest reflection of the base of the anti-gay marriage position. Their view is that gay couples deserve no rights whatever. So their amendment will strip gay couples of marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships and any legal protections (just as the federal one would). The vote would not take place until 2008. Public support for removing all protections from gay couples in Massachusetts is not a majority now, and public opinion in Massachusetts has moved toward favoring gay marriage over the year it has been in force. And so the theo-conservative right hits a democratic wall. As it happens, I went to another wedding this past Saturday. I can’t report much of it since I was bawling through most of it. I’m a terrible softy at straight weddings. But to see two friends marry after eight years of sharing each other’s life and after two millennia of cruelty, oppression and stigma was a little much. And with each such moment, the movement for a wider human family builds.