Yes, but you can’t let people vote on gay marriage - they might choose the wrong option.
When what was implimented? Marriage, matrimony, or SSM?
What does Shirley have to do with SSM? 
What **Menocchio **said.
Just because something happens doesn’t make it right, unless you subscribe to some weird belief that things only happen because they’re supposed to.
Show me where we voted on Brown vs. Board of Education. Same thing as in MA, civil rights recognized by the courts, not by the legislature or directly by the people. It took the Civil War to end slavery, and as such the circumstances of the ratification of the 13th were slightly unusual. As a practical matter, all but two of the slave states had already been freed by presidential fiat. It wasn’t truly democratic. Now, women’s suffrage I’ll give you. But wouldn’t it have been a better thing if women had gotten the right to vote earlier, even if it had to come from less democratic means?
No I just don’t buy the argument about voting on rights. This whole thing gives a free pass to cowardly legislators who should have passed a law 3 years ago allowing ssm marriage. it never should have come to this.
There’s historical precedent for it, but that doesn’t make it right. People shouldn’t have to wait for 3/4 of the public to acknowledge them.
I’ll leave being nice and doing outreach to the activists themselves. (And the best outreach is the example of married gay couples in MA, how normal they are, and how MA society hasn’t fallen apart) As someone who’s just cheering from the sidelines, I reserve the right to speak my mind on the issue. SSM opponents are wrong. Wrong like segregationists and slaveholders were wrong, and in time they’ll be disavowed by polite society just as racists have been. Me, I’m getting in on the ground floor here.
I also appreciate the the decision of the MA supreme court did set off the rash of SSM-banning amendments in practically every other state in the union. I acknowledge that it may have delayed the adoption of SSM in every other state. But I cannot denounce it. I will not tell people not to demand their moral and legal rights by peaceful and legal means out of political and practical fears of how bigots and the ignorant react.
I agree. Would it have also been better if the people of Massachusetts had voted in favor of SSM. I live in Mass & would have voted against the anti-ssm amendment & I admit I do not know what the outcome would have been, but yesterday we had 151 out of 200 senators vote down this amendment, why can’t they pass a law allowing it for good. SSM was legalized by a 4-3 judges decision & I do not know how the law works but it would seem to me that one judge changing his/her decision gets everything back to square one.
It’s a pity there were no message boards back when inter-racial marriage legality was being hashed out in state legislatures and courts. I bet a lot of the arguments would look the same. It would be fun to dig those threads up.
These rights were not, at the federal level and in most states, granted because of the actions of a ballot initiative. These rights were extended due to the actions of Congress, the President, state legislatures, and state governors (and, of course, the courts). That is what is happening in Massachusetts. That is how our system is supposed to work – we the people elect representatives to make the law. If we do not like those laws, we elect other people to undo the law.
It would have been nice, but a win is a win and I’ll take it any way I can. A law would likely have been more easily overturned than the court decision, since the court feels bound to its own previous decisions. Even a large change in the makeup of the court wouldn’t simply contradict the previous court’s ruling. Besides, the anti-SSM crowd doesn’t just get to shout do-over when a justice shifts. They have to show some new reason to go to court against it.
You are absolutly correct, but as it stands right now in Massachusetts we do not have a law we have an interpretation of the constituion. I wish the legislature would make a law & cannot see given the numbers that voted yesterday why they can’t get this done.
Maybe I am totally off base here, but I think a law passed by the legislature would be more safe than a 4-3 judges decision in the future.
In MA, and other states that allow issues to be decided on the ballot, the method was intended to be seldom used. Otherwise, you’d have a hundred ballots issues every year. The legislature was within its legal job description when it turned down the proposal. They are the voters’ agents, sent to decide things. It is not a denial of democracy. The system worked as designed.
Here’s another angle, though. SSM is a hot button issue for evangelical Christians and gay haters. Every time it gets on the ballot, it becomes a useful tool for the GOP. The evangs will pound the pulpits every Sunday, and the haters will be hollering. It’s a big get-out-the-vote incentive. While they’re in the booth, they’ll vote for the right wingers, who have been banging the same Adam-and-Stevie drum.
Please note that I did not lump the evangs and the gay haters into one group. Most anti-SSM evangs see it as a religious issue, not as hatred. They do reliably vote for Republicans when you can pry them out of their easy chairs and herd them down to the polling places. SSM makes a mighty good crowbar for that prying.
Given that in every state but one in which the people have voted on SSM, they chose the wrong option, to ban it by constitutional amendment, I would tend to agree.
Exactly. You can only trust people to vote on an issue when they can be relied on to get the answer right.
Marriage. What does the state have to gain by regulating it?
Your inexplicable snideness aside, this topic does illustrate that democracy and liberty are not the same thing. Liberty is generally held to be the desirable end and democracy the means to it, but what do you do when democracy becomes a threat to liberty? It’s easy to see the correct path in SSM, because it is such a narrow issue that directly affects so few people, it’s obvious that respect for the democratic process is more important (in that it safeguards other, more important liberties) than the damage being dealt to the lives of a small minority of the country, but it does point to larger questions: what do you do with a population willing to vote away it’s own freedoms? How many indignities can a majority inflict on it’s various minorities at the ballot box before the democratic process ceases to be worth defending?
A way of regulation property and establising paternity.