MA Legislature Rejects Protection of Marriage Amendment
July 17, 2002 Massachusetts Catholic Conference www.macathconf.org
Although 130,000 citizens of Massachusetts had endorsed a petition last year to put the Protection of Marriage Amendment on the ballot, the state legislature voted on July 17 to adjourn a joint session for this year without taking up the amendment, effectively killing it. The four year process to amend the state constitution with language reaffirming the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman will have to start from scratch.
"Those legislators who refused to be swayed by the extreme misrepresentations by the amendment’s opponents deserve our most heart-felt gratitude," said Gerry D’Avolio, executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, after the vote. "They stood tall despite a withering stream of attacks accusing supporters of the amendment of harboring bigotry and hate," D’Avolio continued.
A few of the 53 legislators voting against adjournment were on record as opposing the amendment and voted the way they did because such a critical question should not be avoided by parliamentary maneuvers, according to Maria Parker, the Conference’s associate director for public policy.
"The rest," she explained, "opened their doors to us in the weeks before the vote, and gave us a chance to make our case as to why the amendment was necessary to protect the integrity of marriage and why it would not affect health care and other such benefits. These legislators were under tremendous pressure to oppose the amendment, and some were initially skeptical of our position, not surprising given the hostile characterizations of the amendment in the media and by its opponents. Yet they listened, asked tough questions, gave their support, and then followed through with their vote," Parker related. "Their courage is inspiring," she said.
Parker expressed her "great disappointment" with other legislators who "voted against us without even giving us the courtesy of allowing us to visit them, or after treating us with uncalled-for hostility in their offices."
Parker also applauded the members of MCC-Net, the Conference’s new legislative alert network, who "responded so positively to our plea for calls to the legislature". Parker said that "we have a long way to go to reach the point where the Catholic voice will be heard fully in every district and taken seriously as a guide for every public action. However, more people in the pews are beginning to realize that their involvement at the state house and in the grassroots is crucial. We can’t fight these battles alone."
The Conference, the public policy office for the church, supported the amendment as a necessary response to the threat of a case now before the Massachusetts courts seeking to overturn the traditional definition of marriage under the present state constitution. The Conference staff scrutinized the amendment’s language and took account of all of the testimony claiming the amendment would affect social benefits like health care or hospital visitation rights.
The opponents, with one exception, "ignored the amendment’s reference to benefits that are ‘exclusive’ to marriage", according to Daniel Avila, the Conference’s associate director for policy and research. "For us, that word ‘exclusive’ was critical, because it meant that the amendment would reserve to spouses only those benefits that spouses alone have ever received," Avila explained. These would include the right to be identified as being married and to be eligible for a marriage license. Health care is not an exclusive benefit because unmarried people already get health care services from the government, Avila noted. "It was entirely unfair to base opposition to the amendment on legal opinions that did not even bother to read all of the amendment’s language," he said.
A group of other law professors distributed a memo that took the "exclusive benefits" language seriously, but their analysis had numerous other problems, Avila asserted. "We stand by our reading—the amendment was not a bigoted attack on anyone’s access to public service benefits," he asserted.
For background information on the amendment, see POMA Facts and What Benefits Are Exclusive to Marriage?
July 17 Vote, Explanation & Tally
The Senate and House meeting in joint session on July 17 voted in favor of a motion to adjourn, thus killing the Protection of Marriage Amendment by a vote of 137 to 53, and preventing the amendment from going to the voters.
The negative vote means the amendment is dead, despite the support of 130,000 voters across the state who signed the petition last year to put the amendment on the ballot. Distortion and fear tactics won the day for the amendment’s opponents, who mischaracterized the amendment as an attempt to deny health care and other social benefits for unmarried persons.
Please note how your senate and house members voted and send them a handwritten note thanking them or expressing your disappointment.
The following legislators voted to keep the joint session open to allow debate and should be thanked for their vote:
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The following legislators voted to adjourn the joint session, thereby killing the Protection of Marriage Amendment, and should be advised of your disappointment:
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The following members did not vote: