That is all the information I have for now. When I get a link to the agenda, I will post it unless either “the mouse in the House” does, or another poster at this site.
Up, down or sideways, let’s not have another election cycle consumed by this. I hope the legislators vote.
laurelsays
you would not take that position. VOM is desperate for a vote as soon as possible – before the former “yes” (pro-discrimination) voters have time to realize that they are voting on civil equality not personal beliefs; before the former “yes” voters have time to understand that another “yes” vote actually means that we will be consumed by several more years of anti-gay hate and vitriol while we gear up for the public vote to strip a minority of its civil rights. If the legislators take any vote next week other than the vote to postpone, it should be to adjourn.
…and I still say HCFA should pursue to sanctions against the attorneys who voted that way. I DID support the health care vote then, as I think you know.
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Sorry if that’s too inconvenient for your argument.
laurelsays
the legislators have proven that they will ignore the SJC ruling when it pleases them. you can try to sidetrack the message all night if you want, but it won’t change that truth which the legislature itself created.
They have been convinced that they must vote on the marriage amendment. That’s the only reason they did so last time. The HCA amendment was just too much information for them to process and they did the wrong thing. There wasn’t any ‘truth’ created there.
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Laurel – you can talk till the cows come home that they did it LAST time, so they can do it again. You may be correct, but I really don’t think you are. You’ll see on May 9.
laurelsays
i NEVER have said or implied what you claim in your subject line. I have the greatest respect for many of our legislators. some i have zero respect for. but none of them would i ever accuse of being unable to mentally hold more than one idea at a time. that is just plain obnoxious of you.
john-hosty-grinnellsays
You must work for yourself or something, because no company would put up with someone blogging so much on their time. Laurel is right, and the legislators are open to use any parlimentary procedure to get rid of bad ideas that they have used in the past. Like the SJC said, constituents can take up their grievences at the ballot box.
tbladesays
…it’s too easy to attack the person.
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And boring, as well.
john-hosty-grinnellsays
Not an attack. There is no insult here.
tbladesays
…just saying, why is it relevant how many hours PP works? Perhaps he only works part time, perhaps there is another more significant bread winner, perhapss PP is semi-retired, or perhaps PP’s job isn’t that hard and he can blog much of the time? Anyway you sclice it, it’s irrelevant. PP could be unemployed or work 120 hours a week, it doesn’t change the quality of the idea.
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The tone of the post certainly articulated a pejorative position agaisnt PP’s free time. It was meant to be dismissive and used to discredit PP and doesn’t further the conversation about the con-con.
john-hosty-grinnellsays
the error in my judgment. Sometimes it is difficult to seperate what is thought from what should be said. You are right, and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong.
which may or may not exist, but consider this, Peter:
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If the Joint Session pushes the final vote back to, say, November of next year, and the ant-marriage amendments gets its 25%, it won’t appear on the ballot until 2010.
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If the same scenario plays out this year, it is on in 2008.
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Which is better? I don’t know.
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But postponement may have some real consequences.
I think the legislators should vote the amendment down now and be done with it. It is too divisive and wastes too much time on the wrong issues. The right way to prohibit same-sex marriages is by adding “a man” and “a woman” to Chapter 207 sections 1 and 2, which list the public relationships that a man and a woman may not marry.
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But when we do this, we should make sure same-sex marriages don’t lose any protections by also creating Civil Unions that are exactly like marriage except they should not grant a right to attempt to conceive children together, and changing same-sex marriages to civil unions. And we should probably also make explicit the common law understanding of marriage granting conception rights, since many people now seem to believe that a marriage cna be prohibited from conceiving, which is a scary facist eugenic idea. But that is not really necessary, since the Supreme Court has already affirmed that marriage grants conception rights as a matter of common law.
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Other states that grant marriage or “all the rights of marriage” to same-sex couples should make a similar distinction regarding conception rights.
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And then, we should get Congress to enact the compromise: one piece of legislation that simultaneously prohibits any attempt at conceiving a human being that does not join a man and a woman’s gametes, and establishes federal recognition of state civil unions that do not grant conception rights as if they were marriages.
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This could be done now, we could avoid all the divisiveness and wasted time and distraction, and in the end, same-sex couples would finally have equal benefits and protections (I think other states could slowly all be pursuaded to adopt these civil unions since they are not a stepping stone to marriage), and marriage’s conception rights would be preserved, and genetic engineering and cloning prohibited. The only people who would oppose this are the transhumanists and eugencists and big-biotech capitalists who want to replace natural conception with “improved” government regulated commercial conception.
There was an SJC decision called “Goodridge v. Department of Public Health” that makes your “compromise” impossible. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. In that case, they held, first, that existing statutes limited marriage to “one man and one woman” (from the case: “We conclude, as did the judge, that G.L. c. 207 may not be construed to permit same-sex couples to marry.”), and second, that that limitation was unconstitutional under the state Constitution. Your proposal would simply write back into statute a limitation that has already been thrown out. It would be held unconstitutional five minutes after being enacted.
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Having previously demolished the rest of your post, I choose not to address it at this time.
Huh? you said there that the only objection at BlueHampshire that I didn’t answer was that no one thinks it is important, which is hardly an argument. It is why I’ve been working so hard explaining the importance of this issue! And it’s false, anyhow: People like Laurel think that same-sex conception rights are very important, indeed they think they are more important than equal protections and benefits. All of the objections people raised I responded to, and my reponses still stand. They were certainly not demolished, not by you or anyone.
Regarding Goodridge, the state never put the issue of same-sex conception and the possibility of Congress prohibiting it before the court, so the court never considered it. And since there is no law against same-sex conception, then preventing those couples from marriage is clearly unconstitutional. I agree with them. We should certainly have same-sex marriage if we allow that couple to conceive children together, and we do allow them to conceive children together. But when we do enact a federal egg and sperm law, it will prohibit same-sex couples from conceiving, and Goodridge will be irrelevant. Goodridge did not declare that same-sex couples cannot be prohibited from conceiving, because the case was argued ineptly and ignorantly. It just said that absent any distinction in rights in the law, they should be allowed to marry. Preventing birth defects and preserving natural conception are supportable basis to prohibit SSM.
As to their conclusion that 207 cannot be construed to permit same-sex couples to marry, I guess that means we won’t need to add anything to it, but it wouldn’t hurt, considering these are lawyers we’re talking about.
They almost never do anything substantive in the first ConCon of the session, even when the stakes are relatively low. They almost certainly won’t do anything on this occasion, esp. since Terry Murray has publicly come out against the anti-marriage amendment.
and opposed the amendment but considered myself obligated to have the ConCon vote on it, I would hold the vote the day I was sure of getting my 150 to kill it, or on the last day of the session, whichever came first. I believe Laurel is right above that there is nothing preventing her from holding the vote after the election in December 2008, so that if the bad guys win, the actual referendum occurs in the November 2010 election.
centralmassdadsays
eury13says
is that if they were to have the ballot question pass, and it were to end up on the ballot in 2008, it would be right alongside their own names up for re-election. And you can be damn sure the marriage equality folks will find people to run against them, and you can also be sure that the number of angry, pro-marriage voters drawn to the polls will see that more than a few of them lose their jobs.
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Sure, not all 50+ will be defeated, but I guarantee you a few will. How many of them do you think are interested in testing the odds?
the agenda will be something along the lines of
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Constitutional Convention Convenes
Constitutional Convention recesses until _______ at 1pm.
Up, down or sideways, let’s not have another election cycle consumed by this. I hope the legislators vote.
you would not take that position. VOM is desperate for a vote as soon as possible – before the former “yes” (pro-discrimination) voters have time to realize that they are voting on civil equality not personal beliefs; before the former “yes” voters have time to understand that another “yes” vote actually means that we will be consumed by several more years of anti-gay hate and vitriol while we gear up for the public vote to strip a minority of its civil rights. If the legislators take any vote next week other than the vote to postpone, it should be to adjourn.
IF they vote NO, it’s over.
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If they vote YES, you have maximum time to make your case to win at the ballot box.
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How does postponing help you?
Remember something called the health care amendment? Oh, sorry, that’s too inconvenient for your argument…
…and I still say HCFA should pursue to sanctions against the attorneys who voted that way. I DID support the health care vote then, as I think you know.
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Sorry if that’s too inconvenient for your argument.
the legislators have proven that they will ignore the SJC ruling when it pleases them. you can try to sidetrack the message all night if you want, but it won’t change that truth which the legislature itself created.
They have been convinced that they must vote on the marriage amendment. That’s the only reason they did so last time. The HCA amendment was just too much information for them to process and they did the wrong thing. There wasn’t any ‘truth’ created there.
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p>
Laurel – you can talk till the cows come home that they did it LAST time, so they can do it again. You may be correct, but I really don’t think you are. You’ll see on May 9.
i NEVER have said or implied what you claim in your subject line. I have the greatest respect for many of our legislators. some i have zero respect for. but none of them would i ever accuse of being unable to mentally hold more than one idea at a time. that is just plain obnoxious of you.
You must work for yourself or something, because no company would put up with someone blogging so much on their time. Laurel is right, and the legislators are open to use any parlimentary procedure to get rid of bad ideas that they have used in the past. Like the SJC said, constituents can take up their grievences at the ballot box.
…it’s too easy to attack the person.
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And boring, as well.
Not an attack. There is no insult here.
…just saying, why is it relevant how many hours PP works? Perhaps he only works part time, perhaps there is another more significant bread winner, perhapss PP is semi-retired, or perhaps PP’s job isn’t that hard and he can blog much of the time? Anyway you sclice it, it’s irrelevant. PP could be unemployed or work 120 hours a week, it doesn’t change the quality of the idea.
<
p>
The tone of the post certainly articulated a pejorative position agaisnt PP’s free time. It was meant to be dismissive and used to discredit PP and doesn’t further the conversation about the con-con.
the error in my judgment. Sometimes it is difficult to seperate what is thought from what should be said. You are right, and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong.
which may or may not exist, but consider this, Peter:
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p>
If the Joint Session pushes the final vote back to, say, November of next year, and the ant-marriage amendments gets its 25%, it won’t appear on the ballot until 2010.
<
p>
If the same scenario plays out this year, it is on in 2008.
<
p>
Which is better? I don’t know.
<
p>
But postponement may have some real consequences.
<
p>
If you think about it, there are lots of things the legislature could do.
I think the legislators should vote the amendment down now and be done with it. It is too divisive and wastes too much time on the wrong issues. The right way to prohibit same-sex marriages is by adding “a man” and “a woman” to Chapter 207 sections 1 and 2, which list the public relationships that a man and a woman may not marry.
<
p>
But when we do this, we should make sure same-sex marriages don’t lose any protections by also creating Civil Unions that are exactly like marriage except they should not grant a right to attempt to conceive children together, and changing same-sex marriages to civil unions. And we should probably also make explicit the common law understanding of marriage granting conception rights, since many people now seem to believe that a marriage cna be prohibited from conceiving, which is a scary facist eugenic idea. But that is not really necessary, since the Supreme Court has already affirmed that marriage grants conception rights as a matter of common law.
<
p>
Other states that grant marriage or “all the rights of marriage” to same-sex couples should make a similar distinction regarding conception rights.
<
p>
And then, we should get Congress to enact the compromise: one piece of legislation that simultaneously prohibits any attempt at conceiving a human being that does not join a man and a woman’s gametes, and establishes federal recognition of state civil unions that do not grant conception rights as if they were marriages.
<
p>
This could be done now, we could avoid all the divisiveness and wasted time and distraction, and in the end, same-sex couples would finally have equal benefits and protections (I think other states could slowly all be pursuaded to adopt these civil unions since they are not a stepping stone to marriage), and marriage’s conception rights would be preserved, and genetic engineering and cloning prohibited. The only people who would oppose this are the transhumanists and eugencists and big-biotech capitalists who want to replace natural conception with “improved” government regulated commercial conception.
<
p>
There was an SJC decision called “Goodridge v. Department of Public Health” that makes your “compromise” impossible. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. In that case, they held, first, that existing statutes limited marriage to “one man and one woman” (from the case: “We conclude, as did the judge, that G.L. c. 207 may not be construed to permit same-sex couples to marry.”), and second, that that limitation was unconstitutional under the state Constitution. Your proposal would simply write back into statute a limitation that has already been thrown out. It would be held unconstitutional five minutes after being enacted.
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p>
Having previously demolished the rest of your post, I choose not to address it at this time.
Huh? you said there that the only objection at BlueHampshire that I didn’t answer was that no one thinks it is important, which is hardly an argument. It is why I’ve been working so hard explaining the importance of this issue! And it’s false, anyhow: People like Laurel think that same-sex conception rights are very important, indeed they think they are more important than equal protections and benefits. All of the objections people raised I responded to, and my reponses still stand. They were certainly not demolished, not by you or anyone.
Regarding Goodridge, the state never put the issue of same-sex conception and the possibility of Congress prohibiting it before the court, so the court never considered it. And since there is no law against same-sex conception, then preventing those couples from marriage is clearly unconstitutional. I agree with them. We should certainly have same-sex marriage if we allow that couple to conceive children together, and we do allow them to conceive children together. But when we do enact a federal egg and sperm law, it will prohibit same-sex couples from conceiving, and Goodridge will be irrelevant. Goodridge did not declare that same-sex couples cannot be prohibited from conceiving, because the case was argued ineptly and ignorantly. It just said that absent any distinction in rights in the law, they should be allowed to marry. Preventing birth defects and preserving natural conception are supportable basis to prohibit SSM.
As to their conclusion that 207 cannot be construed to permit same-sex couples to marry, I guess that means we won’t need to add anything to it, but it wouldn’t hurt, considering these are lawyers we’re talking about.
They almost never do anything substantive in the first ConCon of the session, even when the stakes are relatively low. They almost certainly won’t do anything on this occasion, esp. since Terry Murray has publicly come out against the anti-marriage amendment.
and opposed the amendment but considered myself obligated to have the ConCon vote on it, I would hold the vote the day I was sure of getting my 150 to kill it, or on the last day of the session, whichever came first. I believe Laurel is right above that there is nothing preventing her from holding the vote after the election in December 2008, so that if the bad guys win, the actual referendum occurs in the November 2010 election.
is that if they were to have the ballot question pass, and it were to end up on the ballot in 2008, it would be right alongside their own names up for re-election. And you can be damn sure the marriage equality folks will find people to run against them, and you can also be sure that the number of angry, pro-marriage voters drawn to the polls will see that more than a few of them lose their jobs.
<
p>
Sure, not all 50+ will be defeated, but I guarantee you a few will. How many of them do you think are interested in testing the odds?