Okay kiddies, it's nearly game time. The amendment to ban further same-sex marriages in the only state that allows them is looking down the track at a July 12th hurdle.
The many options to, if you pardon the expression, queer it are in a beautifully crafted Ethan Jacobs piece in Bay Windows.
It's memories of Lyndon Johnson and of the old-style Mass pols. This time the question is whether to allow a spiteful abuse of a plebiscite to drag on and on, or kill it now with a legislative nit?
If the amendment gets its pathetically low 25% of the General Court to proceed, it would have to pass at another ConCon next year in the identical form. Then it would head to the 2008 ballot. While it would certainly lose on vote in a state where people have seem the present and future of SSM -- and a just fine with it, but it means two years of wasted time, money and emotion all around. (What twits!)
Do check the article to see the ways the amendment could die this year. We have mixed feelings here. Certainly the cleanest resolution would be for 151 or more legislators to show some sense and courage by voting it down. Putting the commonwealth through two years of waste to keep on the good side of a dwindling number of anti-gay forces is just dumb.
Back in the real world, this puts Senate President Robert Don't-Call-Me-Bobby-Anymore Travaglini exactly where he hates to be. Even though he presides over a low-key, low-performance house, he continues to hate strife. He could have led passage of an SSM or civil-union law years ago and avoided it. Noooo.
Now, he'd like this to just disappear.
Unfortunately, he's in the position of chairing the ConCon. Everybody is watching what he'll allow. The procedures that could kill or advance this travesty fall to Trav.
Like it or not, he'll get his second footnote in the history of U.S. SSM.
Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, same sex marriage, amendment, constitutional convention, Travaglini, Bay Windows
No comments:
Post a Comment