Brader’s Argument On Citizen’s Petition is Misguided

Adam Minsky- aminsky@bu.edu – 407.739.7539

Skyler Brader’s response to Sarah Prager’s article on the citizen’s initiative petition opposing same-sex marriage made an important point: the initiative petition for a Constitutional Amendment is a vital part of democracy. As much as one may disagree with the proposed amendment that would remove same-sex marriage rights, it does not mean we should hinder the ability of opponents to access the same democratic process that the gay community exercises regularly.

What alarms me is that while Brader clearly has some knowledge on this issue, he unfortunately is not fully informed. Prager makes a good point in that civil rights should not be on an initiative petition, but due to Brader’s misguided editorial, I feel Prager’s point needs more explanation.

Contrary to Brader’s opinion, objections to the initiative petition are not hypocritical. Our Constitution says (in summary) that there may be no citizen’s initiative that would overturn a judicial decision on civil rights. The reasoning for this is that the civil rights of a minority should not be left to a popular vote. This petition should not have been certified in the first place, since the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. In fact, there is a pending legal challenge- for which the Court will hear arguments in December- for just this reason.

In addition, there have been so many reports of fraud in signature collection for this petition that the Mass Election Law Committee convened a hearing to investigate, and consequently the Senate has proposed a bill to modify signature gathering laws.

Brader also fails to realize that our Commonwealth Constitution has an initiative process for one reason: if the Legislature has not, or is not, taking up the peoples’ business. Hence, the law states that no petition shall be certified if the legislature has, in the past two years, taken up the same or similar issues. The legislature two years ago voted down an Amendment that restricted marriage to a union of one man and one woman and provided no civil unions or legal equivalent. That amendment is the same as the initiative amendment before us now.

I would also like to point out that the gay community has never used an initiative process to take away the rights of a minority. In addition, an online petition cannot be compared to a certified citizen’s initiative petition, contrary to what Brader implies.

In summary, the initiative process, while democratic in intention, is being abused. I agree with Prager (and so does our Constitution), that civil rights should not be addressed through an initiative process. Furthermore, I am disappointed in Brader not only because he was so easily “disheartened” by Prager, but because he lacks the necessary understanding of our Constitutional rights to even enter the discussion. Unlike Brader, I don’t “want” equal rights, I already have equal rights; what I want is to keep them. I find that Brader’s response reads more like a transcript from an episode of the O’Reilly Factor: contrary for the sake of being contrary.

Adam Minsky Vice President, Spectrum GLBT Consortium Representative CAS ’07