Rogue Slayer Law Student Lawyer with Snark Movie Fan

The Advocate has an article Massachusetts lawmakers vow to block gay marriage, which describes Thomas Finneran's (Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Reps) newest plan to block gay marriage. Now that the SJC has determined that such a ban is unconstitutional, and then reiterated this in an advisory opinion that civil unions are not a sufficient alternative, he is considering requesting a stay of their order until there has been a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment to ban these marriages. His expressed concern is that if gay folk are allowed to marry in the meantime and then somehow this amendment is passed by two consecutive sessions of the legislature and then approved in a statewide vote, there might be confusion about what to do with the marriages which have taken place in the meantime.

So basically, he wants the court to continue a discriminatory and unconstitutional practice until such time as the practice can possibly be changed to discriminatory but constitutional. And what if things don't go as he hopes, and either this vote cannot be brought at the earliest date of 2006, or the vote is taken but the amendment is defeated? Will he continue requesting stays until such time as he gets what he wants?

The lengths to which the scare tacticians and desperate politicians (not mutually exclusive categories) are going to prevent this decision, which was arrived at through a completely legitimate and constitutional system, from going into effect is coming close to making my brain explode. Perhaps that's their strategy - confound us into such levels of disbelief that we give up. Sigh...

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