In a previous post I discussed the effort to stop gay marriage in Massachusetts... and I am now happy to report that--after a three-year struggle--that bid has been defeated! The attempt to amend the MA State Constitution failed today when fewer than 25% of the legislators were willing to support it. (And that is a phenomenal statistic in itself.)
The practical effect of today's vote is that opponents of gay marriage will now have to start the process all over again, and they could at the earliest get such a measure on the state ballot in 2012... but since support for such an amendment is so low in the state legislature, gay marriage looks safe in MA for the foreseeable future.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Chalk one up for the good guys.
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 2:45 PM
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3 comments:
That is good news. And time is certainly on the side of tolerance in this case. Our society is getting more tolerant not less.
WOOHOO
I had a class this past semester with a Pakistani student who had only been in the US for about 8 months.
We talked about gay marriage, and sodomy laws, etc, and she innocently raised her hand and asked honestly, "But I thought this was a secular society and government? How do you bar such behavior?" They can do it in Pakistan because they run under religious law, but she didn't understand how someone pulled it off here.
And first we all laughed, and then tired to explain that what's written on paper quite frequently gets ignored and trumped by religious fear.
Interesting remark about Pakistan. Seems like in Pakistan, no attempt is made (or needed) to describe the ban as anything other than it is: a religious thing. Here, they try to peddle the ban under other labels, but we all know where it comes from, deep down.
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