A Massachusetts group seeking to ban same-sex marriages in the state is suing State Senate President Thomas Birmingham for adjourning a joint congressional session without allowing discussion on an amendment the group wants placed on the 2004 ballot. The State Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments this week on the lawsuit.
Although the Senate voted to adjourn session, Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage filed suit against Birmingham after he adjourned the joint session of the House and Senate in July without hearing arguments or voting on an amendment proposed by Citizens for Marriage. The amendment, entitled The Massachusetts Protection of Marriage Amendment, proposed to only recognize unions between one man and one woman as marriages. The Supreme Judicial Court is now considering whether Birmingham acted in error by preventing discussion of the initiative.
MCM spokesman Brian Diver said the organization feels Birmingham kept the legislature from voting on the amendment because he did not want to take a stand against the issue. State Treasurer Shannon O’Brien suffered in the recent gubernatorial race because of her support of gay marriage, Diver said.
‘We’re not afraid of the debate … we expect our opponents to disagree with us,’ Diver said. ‘A lot of the politicians are afraid.’
Birmingham spokeswoman Alison Franklin said the legislators’ inaction on the initiatives was a strong action in itself.
‘It’s clear what members were voting on’ when the joint session voted to adjourn, 153-37, Franklin said, citing statements several legislators made in the media after the session. ‘The legislature took final action by voting to adjourn.’
Acting Governor Jane Swift, on the other hand, has filed a motion with the SJC asking if she should call the Congress back into session to consider this amendment, along with two unrelated amendments that remained unaddressed at a July convention. Swift filed the motion not because she wants to reconvene the Congress, her press office said, but because she isn’t sure if she is obligated to do so.
According to Swift’s press office, laws guiding the governor in a case such as this ‘are very vague, and we want the SJC to issue a ruling to make [them] less vague.’
Citizens for Marriage describes itself as ‘a ballot question committee formed to support the passage of the Massachusetts Protection of Marriage Amendment.’ According to the group’s website, the proposed amendment would state ‘only the union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Massachusetts,’ and that no other unions should be granted the protections or benefits to which a married couple is entitled.
Diver said he believes the amendment is important, even though same-sex marriages are not legal, because ‘knowing [the state’s] liberal agenda, it’s just a matter of time’ before Massachusetts considers recognizing same-sex couples and extending them benefits traditionally reserved for married couples, as New Hampshire does.
Diver said his group’s position was not based on religion, but on tradition, and on a belief that the ‘traditional’ family unit is the best environment in which to raise children.
‘We’re all about the best opportunity for children, which is a mother and a father,’ he said.
To initiate a ballot question, a group has to collect thousands of certified signatures on its petition, a process Diver described as ‘arduous.’ Twenty-five percent of the legislature would have had to approve the measure during this last session, and then approve it again during the 2003-2004 session, if it were to appear on the November 2004 ballot.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
