Would-be dime-store tyrants in PlanetMass legislature finally do their constitutional duty, marriage amendment clears another hurdle

…but it took a sharp boot to the collective rear end from the Supreme Judicial Court and a looming federal lawsuit which likely would have resulted in 109 feudal lords, er, I mean legislators (who attempted to get away with breaking the law in order to kill a citizens’ initiative to restore marriage in the Commonwealth) being held financially responsible for their brazen law-breaking. The odds of success of said federal suit were bolstered (perhaps unwittingly) by last week’s SJC ruling, as the SJC confirmed that the legislators were undisputably afoul of the the law.

From ADF: Victory in Massachusetts! Legislature votes on marriage amendment

BOSTON — Members of the Massachusetts legislature today finally performed their constitutional duty by voting on a proposed marriage amendment to be placed on the commonwealth’s November 2008 ballot.

“The Massachusetts Legislature chose to do the right thing,” said Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Glen Lavy. “Now the amendment moves forward to the next step in the process.”

More than 170,000 of the commonwealth’s citizens had signed petitions in favor of such an amendment appearing on the November 2008 ballot.

On December 13, ADF attorneys filed a federal lawsuit asserting that members of the Massachusetts Legislature had acted illegally by ignoring their constitutional duty to vote on the proposed amendment which defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman.

Last week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that failing to vote violated the Legislature’s sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. ADF’s lawsuit filed on behalf of VoteOnMarriage.org asserted a federal due process claim against the Legislature’s refusal to vote on the amendment.

“Because the Legislature has voted, there is now no further need for the federal lawsuit,” said Lavy.

A copy of the complaint in VoteOnMarriage v. Dimasi can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/VOMcomplaint.pdf.

See, simple, as that. Do your duty and you need not face a lawsuit that would cost legislators(NOT the people of MA, mind you, but the legislators themselves) in excess of $5 million.

Last week, the MA SJC ruled correctly that a failure to carry out a substantive vote would be in clear violation of Article 48 of the MA constitution (although you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage), but that it could not deploy Panzers to crash the walls of the hideous architectural monstrosity known as the state house and force the legislators to vote. Never thought it would be possible to say this about the MA SJC, but this is the way a court is meant to act…as opposed to what the NJ high court pulled in October. Funny though that in 2003, the same court decreed that “marriage” licenses be issued to homosexual couples.

Of course, after the vote early in the day yesterday, the radical Left (which describes about 2/3 of the MA state legislature) could not resist attempting a higher level of political treachery. After capturing 61 votes on the first go-round, a motion to reconsider was passed, which could have nullified the earlier successful vote had the legislature done what it would have loved to have done and recessed without another vote. However, the legislature did reconvene, revote and the pro-marriage side actually picked up a vote. One more legislative vote will be required in the next session and the threshold for inclusion on the 2008 ballot remains 25% of legislature, which is 50 votes. Of course, the measure would still have to succeed on the 2008 ballot and there is much campaigning to be done between now and then, including from the bully pulpit of MA lightweight governor-elect Deval Patrick, whose first act was to lobby legislators to violate their oaths of office and ignore the constitution.

More from Leonard Link: Massachusetts Amendment Moves Forward

Comments are closed.