(via Outraged Liberal.) Ray Flynn gets to the heart of why his side lost the amendment fight:
“The people who are advocating same-sex marriage are very, very determined,” said former Boston mayor and US ambassador to the Vatican Raymond L. Flynn. “They’re very active, and they participate in the process. Give them credit: They know how to wage a political campaign, and politicians respond to that kind of pressure.”
Yes indeed, as Cos pointed out here recently. What’s changed in just the last couple years, when we narrowly avoided an outright marriage ban? Well, pro-marriage forces started winning elections, big time. David Bernstein points out that the unsung hero of marriage equality may well be former Dem Party chair Phil Johnston, who decimated Mitt Romney’s charge on the Democratic castle in 2004. And ever since then, it’s pretty much been pro-marriage dominance at the polls: Sciortino, Moran, Dorcena-Forry, Jehlen, Downing, O’Day, Petruccelli, and on and on. All under the sheltering wing of Sal DiMasi, and now Terry Murray. Oh yeah, and the executive: Some guys named Patrick and Murray.
Flynn conceded that it may be futile to try again to place a gay marriage ban before voters in Massachusetts. “Clearly the petition can be ignored by the Legislature,” said Flynn, adding that supporters of “traditional families” need to galvanize and become as politically active and vocal as the forces in favor of same-sex marriage.
As Atrios says, Na Ga Ha Pen. I’m not a single-issue kind of guy, but it’s up to us to make sure that their four targeted candidates (Ross, Alicea, Loscocco and Puppolo) are defended for their votes. I doubt they have much to worry about.
It’s over. And it’s over because the electoral wave was inescapable. May it crash on more distant legislative shores around the country.
…yet theirs does appear to be a movement fueled by hatred and desperation. Will that just go away?
<
p>
For example, consider Diane Steele. She is from far western Mass and belongs to Vote on Marriage. First, she was outside the Con Con with a stupid and hateful sign:
http://www.flickr.co…
<
p>
Then she assaulted a marriage equality supporter after the vote:
http://www.metrobost…
<
p>
Which reminded more than one person of the assault by Larry Cirignano at last Fall):
http://www.365gay.co…
<
p>
Larry, incidentally, was rewarded for his ‘work’. He was made the director of a “…new organization based in Washington, D.C., ‘dealing with same-sex marriage and other issues in a number of other states,’ according to the Catholic Citizenship statement. The organization is not yet named.”
http://www.bluemassg…
<
p>
As Gov. Patrick said, we are going to have to remain vigilant in defense of our liberties. In my experience, religious nuts are insanely persistent and will not just dry up and go away.
<
p>
Don’t get me wrong! I wish they would. They just don’t ever seem to!
Hey Ray,
<
p>
I support traditional families too! A traditional family is when a child has parents, at least one preferably two, that love and support him or her, or guardians that care. All families carry on the tradition of love, support, and respect. Families that are not traditional in my view are children raised in abusive homes, sent into a dysfunctional foster care system, or raised in an orphanage or refugge camp. Those children lack the care that a traditional family would provide and shame on you and other Catholics for shutting down Catholic Charities Adoption Service and preventing more children from seeking the embrace of a family based on the tradition of love, frienship, respect, and humanity.
“traditional families”
<
p>
In my dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, last copyright date 1967 (hence, it is too early to be considered “politically correct”) the very first definition of “family” is “all the people living in the same house.” According to that definition, my (same-sex) spouse and I have been a family since 1979.
<
p>
Raybo should have stayed in Rome.
“traditional” families have historically not been “nuclear” families (just the parents and children), but combinations of several generations and several nuclear families all together. Yet we don’t see all these defenders of the “traditional family” organizing against permitting children to find places of their own to live – sometimes even gasp not in the same city as their parents. Can we have a constitutional amendment banning that grave structural threat to the traditional family?
<
p>
What this observation fails to recognize is that Sciortino beat Vinny Ciampa, a Dem that Phil Johnson would have been just as happy to remain in office as Sciortino. Same with Dem Fernandes’ primary victory over Marie Parente, who similarly would have been just fine by Johnston. I’m not sure Johnston had much to do with anything relating to marriage equality — those victories belong squarely to the political team at MassEquality.
<
p>
I would assert, based on my heavy involvement/interest in the marriage equality issue since the Goodrich decision that if MassEquality didn’t unseat Dems (of which Phil obviously played no part) we wouldn’t have had the Thursday victory that we just experienced. And Frankly, I’m not sure what Phil did.
Is put a spike through the heart of the Republican Party of Massachusetts. Any GOP legislators elected in 2004 would have been property of Mitt Romney, and would have voted against equality upon his word. For an example, note how Romney’s word flopped GOP votes on the “compromise” civil unions amendment.
<
p>
While Phil fell into the incumbent protection racket problem vis-a-vis Ciampa, he was also the main reason why many pro-equality targets survived their challenges. Prime among those is Terry Murray, whose grasp of the gavel in the ConCon probably got the pro-equality side a coupla votes right there. Add in other targets such as L’Italien and Walsh, and there you have it.
<
p>
One of Romney’s goals in 2004 was to put more anti-equality people in the State House, and Johnston stopped that effort cold.
Phil Johnston was protecting Phil Travis of Rehoboth who had a pro-equality Republican named Steve Howitt running against him. Howitt had Romney’s endorsement.
<
p>
Johnston was protecting one of the… say 4 most vocal and vile gay marriage opponents. Good for Johnston?
Like most party chairs, Johnston was running an incumbent protection thing, and I don’t like to see anyone doing that.
<
p>
But the thing that you ignore is the fact that Johnston advanced the cause of the Democratic Party, which is largely pro-equality, at the expense of the Republicans, which is largely anti-equality. In this state, good news for the Democratic Party is good news for equality.
<
p>
Unless folks here think Johnston should’ve been managing Rich Tisei’s campaign as well…
Like most party chairs, Johnston was running an incumbent protection thing…
<
p>
It is also entities like the (US) Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.
<
p>
Recall the substantial lack of support the SDCC gave to Ned Lamont in the campaign last fall as the Democratic party nominee against Joe Lieberman. I interpret that lack of support for Lamont, and tacit support for Lieberman, as indicating that they fear grass-roots insurgents like Lamont. They’ll elect to support an incumbent, regardless of how unreliable, over a reliable insurgent any day, because other incumbents may lose their party’s nomination.
<
p>
Well, the SDCC has reaped what they sowed: the election of someone (Lieberman) who is nothing but an opportunist. I take the fact that he hasn’t switched to the Republican party as reflecting the thought that he fears that the Democratic party will acquire more seats in 2008, and make his party switch leaving him powerless.
Of course Phil was running an incumbent protection racket, and also trying to get Dems elected over incumbant GOPs or to open seats.
<
p>
That was his job.
<
p>
That it happened to have a net benefit to the MassEquality position does not imply that Phil was fighting for equal rights, or that he deserves any credit for it. As far as I can tell, it was incidental, and Phil was just doing his job ™.
This whole thread started with the question if Phil deserved any credit for winning in 2004, which is ridiculous. Phil didn’t set out to protect equality, and I never implied that. He set out to protect the Democratic party, which here in Mass. has the side effect of largely protecting equality, save for the exceptions painstakingly noted here. Yet even if it was not his primary goal, Johnston’s actions kept around many pro-equality votes.
<
p>
It isn’t that Phil just did his job — the fact is that he did it very well even if he didn’t proclaim his love for pet issue A or B. If Walsh does his half as well, I’m sure we’ll see his praises sung to the skies.
One of the most common complaints I heard from Democrats in 2005 was how little support they got from the party in 2004. A typical sentiment was that MassEquality funded our candidates much better than the party did – and supplied more volunteers.
…and I have yet to talk to a candidate who thinks they got all the money they wanted from the state party. The Dems simply didn’t have the money of Mitt and his Millionaire Posse. Sure, groups such as the AFL-CIO and MassEq were useful, but chairing a party is more than shifting dollars around. Frankly, most of their effort went toward L’Italien, Murray, and other women Romney was running against, and they had a perfect record. On top of it, Phil was key in getting Massachusetts money and work up to NH, which helped swing it blue in the presidential election of 2004.
<
p>
I’m not necessarily including you in this, Cos, but I’ve noticed how everything that went bad for the Mass. Dems was Johnston’s fault, and everything that went well is due to somebody else.
CharleyMTA: In some of those races you list gay marriage was not even an issue because both candidates running were on your side. Petruccelli won the special election but his opponent from revere was an even stronger proponent of marriage equality than Anthony was…MassEquality understandably endorsed the legislator over the city councilor to keep the State House happy in this critical time approaching the vote…
<
p>
The vote result was a great victory but it was a State House victory…we still have along way to go in winning the public acceptance victory so you don’t have to fear a ballot question any longer.
Kudos and many thanks to Mass Equality for all their hard work !!!! Many of the electoral victories were also because of the great work of groups such as Mass Alliance, Neighbor to Neighbor ect. We all need to continue to get involved and work hard to elect and reelect progressives to retain not ony this victory but get to the place where we have social and economic justice for ALL.
Charley’s list is just a few examples, and is far from complete. There were numerous elections between 2004 and today where votes got flipped (and as I said in my comments, other legislators changed their votes because they saw that happening). Not all of them were direct cases of an anti-equality legislator being defeated by a pro-equality challenger, though there were indeed several of those. Many of the races for open seats were also very significant, though.
<
p>
For example, at the beginning of 2005 there were three special elections to replace house members who had retired: in Hyde Park, Allston-Brighton, and Pittsfield. All three who resigned had voted for the amendment. All three open seats drew multiple candidates, including at least one who said they’d vote to ban gay marriage again. In all three, not only did a pro-equality candidate win, but a pro-equality candidate also came second.
<
p>
One of the most significant elections in swaying the legislature was the special election for state senate in the summer of 2005. Nobody thought it was particularly likely that seat would go to Casey (the candidate in the 4-way race who said he’d vote to ban gay marriage), but when the progressive community including MassEquality rallied around Pat Jehlen and she had such a stunning blowout of a win, shattering expectations, that send a very strong message to the rest of the legislature about who you want on your side when you run for higher office.
I am not sure what counts as finishing second, but the special election to fill the Third Berkshire seat in Pittsfield that took place in 2005 had a anti-equality Republican in the general election. A pro-equality candidate did finish second in the Democratic primary, though. That seat was a switch, from Rep. Larkin, who opposed gay marriage, to Rep. Speranzo, who is very outspoken about being for it, but Sen. Downing, whose district includes Pittsfield, replaced Sen. Nuciforo who was also an equality supporter.
Since the general election had only two candidates, one pro- and one anti- gay marriage, the best possible outcome was that the anti- candidate come second. However, this was a Democratic seat, like the other two special elections happening at the same time, so the contest that mattered more was the Democratic primary, and that’s what I was referring to. A primary to fill the seat of an anti-equality Democrat resulted in pro-equality Dems coming first and second (in a field of three, IIRC).
Your memory is generally correct – it was a field of three official candidates, all three of whom were pro-equality, and one write-in candidate, who was anti-equality. What is interesting is that the second place finisher in the Republican primary was for gay marriage.
I take your point, but in fact Petruccelli vs. Rizzo was a perfect example of how previous elections may well have changed the electoral landscape, to the point that the only viable candidates were pro-equality. And of course, Petruccelli replaces anti-equality Travaglini.
<
p>
I absolutely agree that public acceptance needs to be further consolidated in MA, not least so that we can start to make inroads into other states as well. I think that’s already happening.
You got it. Elections held in Cambridge and Boston over the previous three years made it obvious that this seat would go to a pro-equality candidate and that may have been the reason we didn’t see any anti-equality candidates in the race: the incentive to run is much lower when you know you can’t win.
There is nothing inherently valuable in “tradition.” The entire notion that “traditional” families are, by nature, preferred is a canard. What the term “traditional families” omits is any sense of functionality. A married male and female are not, by dint of their “traditional” arrangement, more likely to produce a functional family unit.
<
p>
Personally, I’d love to rid the planet of the “traditional” family as a sort of role model and replace it instead with the idea of a “functional family” in which all of the adults (or the adult) in the household as a priority provide 1) healthy and nurturing structure for the child or children, 2) behavior models that reinforce the types of behaviors that benefit society and make a foundation for healthy and respectful future relationships, 3) consistent demonstration of conflict resolution skills that foster respect and sensitivity to everyone involved, and 4) love, friendship, support, and learning as the centerpieces of the family unit.
<
p>
Simply having a male and female, marriage certificate in hand, reproduce does not guarantee any of the above, and, historically, as we well know, often does not. Children deserve and need all of the elements I mentioned and more even more than they deserve or need married male and female biological parents living under the same roof.
I’m not sure if that wanders too much into social-service-talk, but I like the distinction, and think progressives could make something of that.
I don’t have to respect government because it is not what is proports itself to be. It is not representative, it does not have our best interests.
<
p>
Even granny knows!
http://www.grannywar…
send them some gas money!