A Personal Appeal – Help to Defeat the Anti-gay Constitutional Amendment

They are asking their parishioners to fight to take away civil marriage rights for same-sex couples.  What they don’t say is that the Goodridge decision does not affect churches, which retain the same latitude they have always had to decide who can be married within that denomination and faith.  No church is required to marry same-sex couples. 

The opponents of civil marriage rights for same-sex couples aren’t defending their faith.  They are working to make their religious views the law of the state, regardless of whether other denominations share their views, and regardless of the harm their views would cause to us and thousands of other couples like us.  If marriage rights are taken away, many people like us will lose family health coverage, medical visitation and proxy rights, and inheritance rights for property and savings acquired over the course of a life together.  It is an issue of fairness and treating people equally under the law. 

Currently a Constitutional Convention is scheduled in Massachusetts for November 9th.  Legislators will need to decide whether to hold a vote on a constitutional amendment that, if passed in two consecutive years, would allow a statewide vote on whether to take away the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples.  Gays and lesbians are a tiny minority of the population.  It is hard to see how we can defend our constitutional rights, or how constitutional rights are even a meaningful concept, if they can be negated by a majority vote.  We have lost these votes in every other state where the issue has come to the ballot.

We would like to ask all of you, if you can see your way clear to support us on this issue, to do three things:

1) Call your State Senator and Representative.  Talk to them, if you see them at the polls on Tuesday.  Tell them that the constitutional rights of a minority should not be up for majority vote.  Ask them to work to prevent the anti-marriage rights amendment from advancing to the next session – not just by voting against it, but by making procedural moves if necessary to prevent it. 

2) If you belong to a religious institution, tell its leaders that you agree with the separation of church and state, and that efforts to deny civil rights to gays and lesbians are a violation of this important principle and an affront to you and to your gay and lesbian neighbors.  If your denomination participates in those efforts, ask it to stop.  If it does not participate, ask it to speak out against other denominations that do.

3) Join us on November 9th at the Statehouse.  Past constitutional conventions have featured busloads of religious protesters from other states.  We need fair minded Massachusetts residents to also show up and support us, or our voices, the voices of a small minority, will be drowned out.

Massachusetts took a historic step for equal treatment of its citizens in 2004.  Please help us stop a backlash that would write discrimination against us into our state constitution.

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