The AP reports: "Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution, but stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law." (The entire opinion, including the dissent, is available online.)
Meanwhile, the AP continues, "The Massachusetts question will now return to the Legislature, which already is considering a constitutional amendment that would legally define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman." The state's powerful Speaker of the House, Democrat Tom Finneran of Boston, has endorsed the proposal. And so has GOP Governor Mitt Romney.
The worst outcome: Massachusetts amends its state
constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the ruling gives a
huge push to efforts to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment now in
Congress, which would amend the U.S. Constitution in the same
permanently restrictive manner.
[Update: Given that it can take up to two years to
amend the Bay State's constitution, expect opponents to put their effforts
into amending the federal Constitution.]
The best outcome: Massachusetts passes a civil unions bill along the lines of Vermont's, granting same-sex couples all the state-granted benefits of marriage, and this passes muster with the Massachusetts courts.
Do I want gays to have the right to marry in the fullest sense. Yes! Do I think that, given the current political climate, court-decreed same-sex marriage will be overturned by elected legislatures and create a groundswell of reaction? Yes again. To paraphrase, "It's the 'M' word, stupid!"
The big picture. In the great, ongoing battle between conservatism and progressivism (ok, one could even say "dialectic," if you must), both sides hold a part of the truth. Conservatives aren't just reactionary nabobs; the truth they hold is that there are some essentials that, if tampered with, lead to chaos (e.g., the folly of "rational" socialism, which sought to replace age-old markets with central planning, and produced tyranny and poverty). Progressives, on the other hand, hew to the truth that times change and if society doesn't evolve to provide human beings with greater liberty and dignity, it will become corrupt and atrophy.
The American revolution was progressivism at its best; the French (Russian, Chinese, etc.) revolutions were progressivism at its worst, and showed the value in the conservatives' worldview ("go slow, don't alter the fundamentals, or at least be exceedingly wary about doing so").
Here we have two "truths," at war with each other. Right now, despite the rulings of some liberal justices, the nation is clearly not yet convinced that same-sex marriage wouldn't destroy an essential bedrock and lead to social breakdown. The best way to demonstrate that, on the contrary, it would be the sort of "good" progress that advances humanity is to let people get used to civil unions on a state by state level, starting where support for gay rights is already high.
Will liberal activists use the courts to overreach and produce a backlash that will set back gay marriage for a generation or more? Or am I being overly cautious and not giving enough credit to the cultural changes that have already taken root in this country? We'll soon see.
Wrong About Everything?
There were two declarations this past week from the nation's
Roman Catholic bishops, as summarized in the following
headlines:
- U.S. Catholic Bishops Move to Reinforce Ban on Birth Control
- Catholic Bishops Oppose Legalizing Gay Marriage
Guess which declaration is going to be given major play by
conservatives (hint: it's not the one that might interfere with
their personal lives!).
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