May 17: Double Anniversary For Equal Rights

One year ago, discrimination in marriage was ended as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Goodridge vs Department of Public Health of November 18, 2003 went into effect after a 6-month delay, on the 50th anniversary of the even more famous Brown vs Board of Education by the United States Supreme Court on May 17, 1954. Despite reports to the contrrary, the world has not ended! Today, gays and lesbians and their supporters are celebrating over 6000 legal same-sex marriages which have occurred in the last 12 months.

However, the battle is on to see if these same sex marriages will last another 18 months. As in Hawaii and Alaska, voters amended their constitutions after courts ruled in favor (though not dispositively) of gay marriage. The attempt to amend the Massachusetts state constitution is under way. Before it can be presented to voters in Novermber 2006, an amendment must be approved by a majority of the state legislature, sitting as a consitutional convention. In March 2004, the legislature approved a "compromise" amendment by a vote of 105-92 which would prohibit marriage by same-sex couples in Massachusetts and set up civil unions for same sex couples. In the November 2004, a number of pro-equality candidates defeated anti-gay marriage candidates. However, in today's Los Angeles Times, Marty Rouse, the campaign director for Massachusetts Equality, the local organization dedicated to maintaining equal marriage rights in Massachusetts, declared "We currently do not have the votes right now to defeat this [constututional] amendment." And it appears that conservative opponents may now be pushing for just the full ban on same sex marriage without the establishment of civil unions, which they claim are the same thing where clearly the states of Vermont (2000) and Connecticut (2005) would disagree.

The vote to preserve marriage in Massachusetts will be close. I hope that today, on the 51st anniversary of the ruling which ended the legal principle of "separate but equal" in public accommodations on the basis of race and the 1st anniversary of the end of marriage discrimination on the basis of gender in the United States, people will take a moment and think about what kind of country they want to be living in on future May 17ths.