Voters will ultimately back marriage rights

Attleboro Sun Chronicle Editorial, April 1, 2004

Gay couples will start getting married in Massachusetts in about seven weeks. They'll go on getting married in the weeks and months after that.

They'll live openly as committed life partners. Gay couples will increasingly populate the state's neighborhoods. They'll be our friends, co-work ers and sometimes our family members.

Will voters 2 1/2 years from now choose to suddenly deprive these couples of their married status by approving a constitu tional amendment reserving marriage for heterosexual couples?

We doubt it. With gay mar riages legalized by the state's highest court as of May 17 and a vote on the amendment not possible until November 2006, we see only increasing acceptance of gay relationships and less and less stigma attached to homo sexuality.

A slight majority of Massachusetts residents – 53 percent – are said to oppose gay marriage, but we think the poll numbers will change over time.

The latest survey showed 60 percent of residents do support civil unions, which provide the legal benefits of marriage with out the title.

As the Supreme Judicial Court said, however, true equality for gay couples is not possible without the ability to marry, and the constitution requires that they be treated equally with het erosexual couples.

Massachusetts voters, we believe, appreciate how denial of marriage perpetuates second class status for a group of people. We believe the voters will ultimately choose to uphold those rights rather than codify discrimination in the constitution.

We applaud Attorney General Thomas Reilly for preventing Gov. Mitt Romney from trying to block the SJC's ruling, even though Reilly happens to oppose gay marriage himself.

The attorney general recognizes that Romney has no case to make that the court hasn't already rejected in its two opinions, and that the governor is playing politics with this volatile issue.

We also deplore the anti-gay lobby's efforts to use this one issue to try to oust lawmakers who oppose a constitutional amendment. Legislators and their challengers should be judged on the full range of issues of importance to voters, not a single litmus test.

The gay marriage debate will inevitably be a significant topic in this fall's legislative campaigns and again next year or 2006 when the next Legislature will take a vote on the proposed constitutional amendment that was approved by the current Legislature this week.

However, those debates will occur in a changed environment of more and more gays – some of them married – living openly and proudly as couples.

People will see that they are no threat to others, and that life will continue as they know it after gays are allowed to marry.

Let the wedding bells ring.

'Freedom to Marry Rings' image upper right © H. Mitchell.