The media has an amazing ability to fall for right wing talking points time after time again. Sadly, all too often myriad people buy into them – including progressives. “We just want an up or down vote,” President Bush would say. Never mind the fact that parliamentary procedures are there for a reason. Never mind the fact that laws aren’t supposed to be easy to pass (and Constitutional Amendments damn near impossible). Rhetorical prose makes right, especially when the right – wing, that is – is behind it. I’m sure James Dobson would be proud.
Isn’t it amazing how rhetoric influences policy? Get a simple, catchy slogan or chant – “let the people vote” – and suddenly the most heinous and vicious policies seemingly deserve the time of day. No, ladies and gentlemen, they don’t. To avoid horrible policies is exactly why parliamentary procedures exist. If they didn’t exist, just imagine what terrifying propositions would have reached the ballots of the uneducated voter? Just imagine what nightmarish policies would have left state-house committees?
Alexis de Toqueville wrote a poignant book in the early 19th century – it was called “Democracy in America.” In the book, de Toqueville coined a phrase that almost everyone has heard of at some point or another: “the tyranny of the majority.” Ironically, Alexis de Toqueville didn’t perceive it as a huge threat – just something to be ever vigilant about. Perhaps parliamentary procedure has something to do with it? Otherwise, just look at who could be locked up for being of color, gay or “unAmerican” if bills were easy to pass. So when the next pundit, Globe story, BMG diarest or rabid right winger spouts on about how the legislature should vote, tell them it already did – and the stupid bill died the same horrible death that tens of thousands of other stupid bills have before it. Amen.
Ryan, please don’t mix up the health care amendment advocates with the anti marriage rights bigots. we health care folks didn’t ask the other group to launch their effort a year after we launched ours. they just did. and it stinks.
<
p>
just as i cannot exactly walk in your shoes and feel the passion that you do, you likely cannot walk in my shoes and feel the passion that i and other advocates of a just health care system carry in our hearts and minds.
<
p>
have you tended the wounds of a person who has undergone a preventable amputation? changed the bandages and provided pain management education to this person who had half his foot cut off just because he couldn’t afford insurance? he didn’t seek care for a sore foot until he couldn’t work his job as a janitor, and then when he went in to the ER he was diagnosed with diabetes and gangrene that had developed in what began as a minor foot wound? (diabetic nerve damage had reduced the sensation in his foot).
<
p>
this man, lacking family supports, rather quickly became homeless because of not being able to work and not having large savings. I helped to take care of this man as his nurse for many weeks while he was a patient with health care for the homeless.
<
p>
have you cared for the woman undergoing radiation and chemo to treat the symptoms but not cure her advanced esophageal cancer that was not diagnosed while symptoms were mild? she worked as security guard in a hospital but could not afford health insurance. only when she was not able to eat did she seek care in the ER where she worked (for heavens sake) feeling embarrassed and somehow deficient for not having health insurnace coverage.
<
p>
have you taught the familiy of a middle aged woman, now half paralyzed and unable to swallow due to a stroke secondary to high blood pressure that she didn’t even know she had becuase she lacked insurance and access to primary care, how to administer tube feedings and crushed medications thru a tube inserted thru her adbominal wall into her stomach? I was one of her nurses while I worked as a home care nurse with the Boston VNA for 10 years.
<
p>
These tragic scenarios are just the tip of an iceberg. i could on and on about more patients and families but i won’t. they’re in my mind and in my heart though. and i’m not alone.
<
p>
i’ll remind everyone that although we don’t have universal affordable insurance coverage at present we do indeed pay for the care for these persons once they have advanced and expensive illnesses.
<
p>
i don’t mean to lecture. i just want you to feel the sincere passion that fuels our work on the health care amendment that comes from a place of caring and love and a belief in justice. for all.
<
p>
ryan and others, do we have an option here to fighting each other? most of us in this conversation seem to be on the same side with respect to our values. The deeply held values that lead us to uphold equality and dignity for all persons. and wouldn’t you agree that access to comprehensive affordable health care is essential to human dignity?
<
p>
so what are our options?
I wrote a reply to this very same – cut and pasted – reply on a seperate thread. I replied to it there and shall reply no further on this duplicate.
<
p>
I don’t get what the heck health care has to do with marriage equality; they’re not mutually exclusive and are two seperate entities. This thread has nothing to do with the former.
There’s a big, big difference between using parliamentary procedures to kill an ordinary bill, and using them to kill a proposed constitutional amendment. The difference is that there’s nothing at all in the Constitution that requires every bill that someone files be given a floor vote — so there’s nothing wrong with burying a bill in committee rather than bringing it to the floor for a vote by the entire membership. But the Constitution does require “final action” on all proposed constitutional amendments (I’ll respectfully disagree with those who argue otherwise). I think the cases have been pretty clear on this question. And constitutional rules should trump parliamentary procedures.
David, that is so vague that it seems very tenuous to argue it. The fact remains that the legislature can easily meet the requirements of the sjc and never enter a vote… it’s called stalling and filibustering. If you don’t like parliamentary procedure, argue to change it. However, so long as it’s way too easy to get these things shoved through the legislature, I’m not going to condemn the state leg for using their available tools. It would be one thing if it required 75% of the popular vote – or 75% of the leg and 50% of the popular vote… but right now, it’s absurd we’d allow these sorts of things to go forward. Bad bills (and amendments) are meant to die, this one’s facing the same death as a thousand before it.
about saying that the Constitution has one set of rules for bills, and another for proposals to amend the Constitution. Beyond that, I’d just note that you’re arguing here, as you argued in the other thread, that you don’t like the amendment process. Fine — get your legislator to file a proposal to change it. But we have to deal with the current proposals under this process.
For example, the legislature could meet on January 2nd and argue all day and night about the amendment. At 9pm, the session has to end no matter what. In that case, an up or down vote wasn’t reached – but no constitutional principal could have possibly been broken. The legislature can’t alter time, after all.
…and it should be called to task for manipulating it.
<
p>
I mean, really – after all the midnight sessions, it had to stream out the door at 6 pm to get home to a hot supper?
<
p>
Any reason why they couldn’t return fresh as daisies on Nov. 10th? Or Nov. 14th, if Fridays and Mondays are too taxing for them?
If someone disagrees with you, then they are equal to James Dobson, President Bush, or Unnamed Right-Wing Pundit.
<
p>
As someone on the same side of the marriage equality issue as you, I ask you to re-examine your approach to writing about it. We can’t really affort to insult current and potential allies if/when it ever comes up to a vote.
that is exactly what this is about. I was against the tyranny of the majority of the senate trying to get rid of the filibuster to get in radical judges, and we have to be consistent with such abuses even when we agree with the majority. The majority of our legislature is trying to change the rules in the middle of the process to deny the minority their democratic rights. Does it matter that the minority is representing a hateful attack on civil rights? Yes, which is why the measures are justified, but they are absolutely not “right” or “good”.
<
p>
The debate has to be: the goals are good, but the process is not, so what can be done instead to stop the marriage ban goign forward with infringing on the constitutional democratic process designed to protect minority opinions?
There’s more to things than just process. When the South was trying to leave the Union, it may have been wrong for Honest Abe to declare war. We could have held a vote instead, one that would have required to change the Constitution so states could leave the Union. It may have been the right “process” instead of attacking our own – but it was absolutely the right frakking decision. It may have been the right “process” to let slavery continue, but it would have been morally reprehensible to do so.
<
p>
Sometimes process has to come second to what’s right. This is one of those cases – and it’s not as if there’s been any huge violation of processes. The legislature has just decided not to vote right now, which is every bit their right. Let the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts or Mitt Romney try to compel them to vote on the second. Or if you feel very strongly about it, make some phone calls to your legislative reps. That’s a process available to you.
thanks for the response: i think that you are comletely right in spirit, and that there are times where extraordinary methods are neccesary. i just don’t think the situation warrants it yet. if it gets to the next session, and we don’t have the votes to beat it (which is unlikely) then we should talk about doing whatever it is neccesary. but (1) i think we should defeat it honestly if we can (2) if we can’t beat it now, then i hope we can in january (3) the health care amendment deserves to be voted to ballot. i don’t want the court or romney to force the legislature to vote, and i don’t think they can: but all along I’ve asked my senator and rep to vote against the marriage ban, but vote for it properly, and to vote to send the health care amendment to the ballot.
<
p>
we all agree in the medium term, to keep this off the ballot. and clearly in the long term, to protect all of our rights to equal marriage. but i’m still not buying the short term plan.
says that if we pass this along forward now, it will give a lot of cover to certain reps and senators to vote “yes” next time too. They already would have voted yes on it once, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see them vote yes on it again. It would be a mistake to move this forward.
<
p>
About two weeks ago, I was in favor of voting on it too. It didn’t happen. The legislature spoke – and I’m not about to start attacking them on it now. The vote was actually quite courageous. It would have been very easy for them to send this on to the next session. But they did what they felt was necessary. I can’t, for the life of me, think that they would have done what they did IF it would have suddenly become easy to kill this bill next session, because they wouldn’t have had to stick their necks out if they did it then.
<
p>
This is a dead issue. What happened has happened. I suggest we all live with that, whether that was what we wanted originally or not. In the meantime, let’s work on a mutually beneficial proposal – such as the one I wrote about a few hours ago.