Tuesday, January 02, 2007

I'd Like to Vote on Your Marriage

Sometimes you've got to go with your gut.

I've been agonizing for months over whether or not I thought the Legislature should vote on the gay marriage amendment. (Okay, so agonizing...maybe an overstatement. Even I'm not that obsessive, nerdy, or angsty.) I've been considering it. Going back and forth. Trying to figure out my opinion on the topic.

(I'd like to assume it goes without saying that I absolutely 100% think gay marriage should be legal and, indeed, is a civil right, etc etc etc. I also think the concept of "letting the people vote" on a civil right is absolutely abhorrent, a tyranny of the [potential] majority, and the reason we have things like Bills of Rights. I'd hope that was blatantly obvious to anyone who stumbled across this blog...but in case you're not a regular reader, let me clear that one up right away.)

I also have a great respect for process, and a good liberal loyalty to its sanctity. Ever since Politics 105 (Obies, you know it), I've thought process over product was a pretty sound theory, a method of policymaking that led, in the end, of the overall best product and the best protection of individual rights on the grander scale.

So this legislative vote has been a tough one for me. I thought Sam Allis wrote a great essay on the topic. He calls himself a process liberal, and I think I agree with him. But I also thought
Dan Kennedy got it right when he made an analogy between refusing to vote to put gay marriage on the ballot to refusing to vote to put slavery on the ballot. In other words, I've been all over the place on this issue.

But really, debating whether or not they should of voted isn't the point of this post. (After all, it's been done ad naseum in the Globe, the Herald, and on the blogs (just go check out
Blue Mass Group if you're really not sick of it yet.)

My point is that the second I heard that the legislature had voted to advance the anti-gay marriage amendment, I knew instantly where I stood. I was angry, I was upset, I was swearing in my office. (My co-workers, I'm sure, think I'm insane.) I didn't give a damn that they "upheld the sanctity of the process" or whatever bullshit language I was quoting to friends a few weeks ago. The bastards decided it was okay, actually okay, to vote on whether my friends, me, or anyone else I know can marry someone they love. I don't even care that most of them voted against it. They put it to a vote. They thought it was something they had the right to decide. I've got two words for them -- and for Mr. Senate President in particular -- fuck. off.

Even better, they didn't, in the end, give a whit about the process anyway. They refused to vote on the Health Care Amendment, which faced a similar fate as the Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. (But I bet you aren't going to hear the editorial staff at the Herald or the leaders of the Vote on Marriage groups complain about that, will you?) Turns out, they (or at least some of them) only cared about the "process" when they were getting a little public scrutiny on the subjects. There was no practically no media attention given to the health care amendment, and, hence, no vote.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

On the other hand, nice to know public outrage counts for something.

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