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Ellen Goodman Same-sex marriage hasn’t ruined Massachusetts
Ellen Goodman is a nationally syndicated columnist.

   Back in 2004, a month before the first wedding bells rang for same-sex couples, then-Gov. Mitt Romney offered his opinion that “Massachusetts should not become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.”
   It wasn’t that he wanted to protect Massachusetts’ reputation. He wanted to protect the country from what he regarded as Massachusetts’ folly. For that purpose Romney unearthed a 1913 law that said couples couldn’t be married here unless the unions would be legal in their home states.
   Frankly, I rather fancied the idea of Massachusetts as the new Vegas. What happens here stays here. At about the same time, Britney Spears explained her 55-hour marriage to a childhood friend by saying, “I do believe in the sanctity of marriage, I totally do. But I was in Vegas and it took over me.”
   I can’t imagine an Elvis impersonator driving a pink Cadillac of to-be-weds up Beacon Hill, nor do I equate the push for marriage equality with the quickie wedding. But I can envision a Paul Revere character ushering couples into Old North Church or a Minuteman welcoming them on the Lexington Green. Like, totally. I was in Lexington and it took me over.
   The 1913 law has a rather murky past. It was ostensibly designed so that couples couldn’t escape the marriage laws in their home state. But the law was passed in the aftermath of a front-page scandal involving black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson’s marriage to a 19-year-old white woman. It had the racist whiff of anti-miscegenation.
   Fast forward to last week. The Massachusetts Legislature finally and firmly ended the push for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In three years, 10,000 couples have married, the sky hasn’t fallen, pro-marriage legislators were not turned out of office, and we now live with gay neighbors, friends and co-workers who are married. Who wants to take back the stemware?
   But almost as soon as the vote was counted, a question arose about repealing the 1913 law. There’s already a bill in the Legislature to do that. Gov. Deval Patrick — noting the “smelly origins” of the law and calling it “outdated” — has said he’d sign a repeal.
   So opponents again are ramping up fear and loathing of Las Vegas. Or, as Kris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute warns, Massachusetts could “become the Mecca for same-sex marriage.”
   Las Vegas? Mecca? So far, little Rhode Island is the only state that allows gay residents to wed in Massachusetts. We are the Las Vegas of Rhode Island. But some are saying that if we overturn the 1913 law, the marrying hordes will come and go back home with a license and a lawsuit.
   Whether you like or loathe the idea, repealing the 1913 law isn’t likely to have much effect. There are at least 44 states with no chance of recognition because of statutes or constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage. As Joanna Grossman, a family law professor at Hofstra who has written extensively on this subject, says, “There’s nothing much one state can do to change the national landscape.”
   Gay couples can already get married in Canada and come home unmarried. So, too, couples could get married in Massachusetts but go home and be unmarried in, say, Michigan.
   “What makes marriage legally important is recognition by the jurisdiction in which you live,” says Grossman. “There’s the chance that couples would use this to litigate in a handful of other states like New York. There is the chance that, in a few states, a court might rule that even though we don’t permit same-sex marriage, we recognize it if valid elsewhere.” But by and large, what would happen is this: “Massachusetts would suffer a brief economic boom and that would be the end of it.”
   From the get-go, opponents have been raising alarms — and funds — on the notion that same-sex marriage will be “shoved down the throats” of Americans. What’s remarkable is that samesex marriage hasn’t been shoved down the throats but placed before our eyes. In barely over a decade, Gallup reports, the number of Americans who believe in same-sex marriage has risen from 27 percent to 46 percent. The radical idea of civil unions is now the moderate idea.
   Mine may be the only state with full-fledged marriage for some years. It may be less of a launching pad than a laboratory. We need laws for 2007, not 1913. But all in all, don’t confuse us with Vegas or Mecca. What is it the Chamber of Commerce likes to label us? The cradle of liberty. Like, totally.  

Quoted from Shadow

Massachusetts is the cradle of liberal mania, every liberal movement starts in either Mass. or Mexifornia something I wouldn't be proud of.

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Like others of the British colonies along America's Atlantic seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries, Massachusetts was founded by people seeking in a wilderness for a new way of life involving such then-untried notions as freedom of religion and self-government. These and other ideals were severely tested during more than 150 years of colonial life, but they came to provide much of the ideological underpinning of the American Revolution, from which Massachusetts emerged as one of the founding and leading members of the new United States.

Massachusetts has been, nearly from its founding, a leading force in American education. During the 19th century Boston became synonymous with the highest attainments in America's cultural and artistic life, and the state as a whole provided industrial and financial leadership for the nation. Though these latter positions have long since been yielded to larger and faster-growing states and regions, the history and people of Massachusetts have left an indelible mark on the development of the American consciousness.

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Gay pride focuses on religion, marriage
  
By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press
Sunday, June 24, 2007

NEW YORK -- Religious groups led the city's gay pride parade on Sunday, lending gravity to an often outrageous event that also featured a jumble of drag queens in feather boas, marching bands, motorcycle-riding lesbians, rugby players and samba dancers.
  
"We stand for a progressive religious voice," said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of New York City's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. "Those who use religion to advocate an anti-gay agenda, I believe, are blaspheming God's name."

The annual parade, one of dozens around the world, commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots in which patrons at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against a police raid.

At San Francisco's festival, the wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards marked the occasion by splitting with her husband over support for legalized gay marriage.

"I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me," Elizabeth Edwards said at a news conference before the parade. "I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage."

Kleinbaum, who heads the world's largest predominantly gay synagogue, and the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, were the New York parade's grand marshals, waving from hers-and-his convertibles.

The march took place days after the New York State Assembly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, which Gov. Eliot Spitzer supports. Although the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled state Senate anytime soon, parade-goers said they were cheered by the Assembly's action.

"This is one very important step toward full equality for all New Yorkers," Kleinbaum said.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, one of the nation's most prominent openly gay elected officials, said she could not predict when the Senate might approve same-sex marriage.

"All conventional wisdom in New York state on gay marriage is out the window," she said. "I think we are really doing better than anyone would ever have thought we could be doing on this."

As in past years, exhibitionists were also on display as the parade inched down Fifth Avenue and into Greenwich Village. Some revelers gyrated in bikini briefs and pranced in spike heels.

But the placement of the Christian, Jewish and Buddhist religious organizations near the head of the march -- ahead of AIDS service groups and political advocacy groups -- gave them unaccustomed prominence.

A Buddhist group carried signs that said "Construct Dignity in Your Heart" and "Don't Block Your Buddha."

"We're all Buddhas," said Hortense De Castro, a teacher from Manhattan. "It's just a matter of letting it come out."

The gay Catholic group Dignity had a float and a giant rainbow flag. Jeff Stone, secretary of the New York chapter, said he was hopeful the church would someday change its stance opposing homosexuality.

"We see that the opinion of ordinary Catholics is changing," he said. "Eventually what happens at the grass roots percolates up in the church."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg marched with Quinn and other elected officials, including Lt. Gov. David Paterson.

Toni Cinanni of Perth, Australia, said she was surprised at the prominence of the church groups.

"I thought the religious groups had hijacked the parade," she said. "I couldn't put it together, religion and sexuality."
New York's parade featured contingents of gay police officers and firefighters, as well as ethnic gay groups including South Asians, Haitians and American Indians. An Argentinian and Uruguayan group featured an Eva Peron impersonator in a flowing gown.

Tens of thousands of people attended the march. Spectators lining Fifth Avenue included gay people sporting rainbow flags and curious tourists.

Andrew Stanley of Shrewsbury, England, said the march was "very colorful."

"I've never seen one before," he said, "but I think it's a good idea."

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"We stand for a progressive religious voice," said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of New York City's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. "Those who use religion to advocate an anti-gay agenda, I believe, are blaspheming God's name."

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Assemblyman Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, also interviewed during the debate, said he was listening to it and had not decided how he would vote. Tonko said he had missed the internal debate in the Democratic conference.  

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"We're all Buddhas," said Hortense De Castro, a teacher from Manhattan. "It's just a matter of letting it come out."

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Assemblyman Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, also interviewed during the debate, said he was listening to it and had not decided how he would vote. Tonko said he had missed the internal debate in the Democratic conference.  

Quoted from senders

Bull...hhhmmmit!!!

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Change after marriage could be immoral  
First published: Thursday, July 5, 2007

Sylvia Honig (letter, June 30) states that homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc., want fair and equal treatment under the law.
Males and females who cannot function as biological males and females are, to put it bluntly, dysfunctional. If they knew they were in this condition before marriage, they had no right to get married to an unknowing partner. Such a marriage could be annulled.

  
Ms. Honig then asks, "If these people change after marriage, are their marriages to people of the same sex now to be considered illegal or immoral?" In a word -- yes.

MAUREEN HEALY
Kinderhook

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Mass. bar sued for gay marriage question  
  
By ERIN CONROY, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:53 p.m., Friday, July 6, 2007

BOSTON -- A man said he failed the Massachusetts bar exam because he refused to answer a question about gay marriage, and claims in a federal lawsuit the test violated his rights and targeted his religious beliefs.
  
The suit also challenges the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, which was legalized in Massachusetts in 2003.

Stephen Dunne, who is representing himself in the case and seeks $9.75 million, said the bar exam was not the place for a "morally repugnant and patently offensive" question addressing the rights of two married lesbians, their children and their property. He said he refused to answer the question because he believed it legitimized same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, which is contrary to his moral beliefs.

Dunne, 30, was denied a license to practice law in May after scoring 268.866 on the exam, just shy of the 270 passing grade.

His lawsuit against the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also claims the state government is "purposely advancing secular humanism's homosexual agenda."

The "disguised mechanism to screen applicants according to their political ideology has the discriminatory impact of persecuting and oppressing (Dunne's) sincere religious practices and beliefs" protected by the First Amendment, and was "invasive and burdensome," according to the lawsuit filed last month.

Dunne's telephone number was unlisted. He told the Boston Herald he has a law degree from a Boston law school and is attending a Boston business school.

Officials with the state bar would not say how much the questions are worth or how the tests are scored, and the court also declined to comment.

David Yas, editor of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said the suit was "idiotic" and that Dunne was "completely missing the point about what it means to be a lawyer."

"Knowing the law has nothing to do with agreeing with the law," he said. Yas said if Dunne really believed the question was improper, he should "answer the question correctly, get your law degree and use it to argue for what you believe in."

Lee Swislow, executive director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, said Dunne is trying to use a legal question to advance a political agenda.

"The bar exam was a test of whether he knew how to apply domestic relations law, and he refused to answer," she said. "Now he's suing, and I think that makes him a loser."