Massachusetts' Gay Marriage Ruling
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) was asked to rule on whether or not Massachusetts specifically barred civil marriage between two people of the same gender. Their recent ruling proclaimed "barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution." The ruling unequivocally stated that Massachusetts law did not prohibit marriage between same-sex couples and that it provided a 180-day delay in implementation of its ruling to allow time for the state legislature to pass any laws it deemed necessary to implement the ruling.
To hear the furor from some parts, one would think that the ruling was designed to invalidate non-same-sex civil marriages. Somehow opponents have construed the ruling to "take away" something from existing and future non-same-sex civil marriages, or that having same-sex civil marriages would somehow 'taint' non-same-sex civil marriages. Note that I have called them civil marriages to differentiate them from religious ceremony marriages. To hear the Catholic Church on this ruling, one would be tempted to believe the ruling required the church to perform same-sex marriages. One wonders if some of the opponents are really just homophobic and the marriage issue merely a smoke screen. Gays have been discriminated against in many ways and the ability to legally validate a union of two same-sex individuals was just one of many. The ruling merely clarifies that non-same-sex civil marriages have never been prohibited by Massachusetts state law.
To deny citizens of Masachusetts the right to a civil marriage based on archaic notions, is a denial of the civil rights to these individuals. Though in the end, the marriage of same-sex partners may be modified by the legislature to be civil unions recognized by the state, the benefits of marriage should not be minimized or denied.
12/9/03 ( 314 )
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