Thursday, July 26, 2007

MassMarrier Has Something to Say

Listen up, folks, we have some important work to do on the equality front - so goes Mike's message.

Enough basking in the June victory. We have three legislative mountains to climb. We have a governor, lieutenant governor, house speaker and senate president who have records of supporting equal rights. They had to fight their reactive battle. Now it's time to pay some progressive dues.Our mountains come in three sizes and difficulty factors. Let's see some action on:

What are Mike's three courses of action?

Step one: repeal 1913.

They are an affront to our proclaimed love of liberty and equality here. They also insult all logic by pretending that every married same-sex couple here will remain Massachusetts residents forever. This climb should be quick and easy. This should be a one-day debate and a single vote in each house. There's no excuse not to knock this out now.

Step two: clean up the laws. We have a number of statutes still on the books from before the Goodridge decision that aren't in step with our new way of life and liberty in this state. We ought to fix them.

Step three: change the initiative process. Mike and I have slightly different views on how we'd go about changing the process, but suffice it to say we both agree that civil liberties shouldn't be able to be changed, morphed or gutted with only 25% of the state legislature's approval.

Only step three should be difficult, yet here we are more than a month later and 1913 is not only still on the books, it's moving no where fast. That has got to change.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, step 1 is something completely different:

Pay the debt you owe.

The Amendment went down because legislators from conservative districts changed their votes. Now they're under attack.

Marriage equality supporters promised to get their backs. Are they as good as their word? Or not?

BTW, WTF is up w BMG???

I went over there for the first time in months, and the lunatics are now completely running the asylum. What a joke.

You hinted that somebody was planning to set up a serious progressive blog for Mass. What happened to that?

Ryan said...

Well, let's just say I don't exactly fear the threat they face. However, I'm there with you on defending them on the marriage equality issue... but that shouldn't prevent us from passing a repeal on the two 1913 laws.

There were a few progressive projects going around that I was referring to a few months ago, one of them being the podcast LeftAhead, which is of course still in its growing phase. There's another project I'm not affiliated with still in the works; I don't know what's keeping them. LOL.

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