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Full Text of Letter Mass. Citizens for Marriage Your Senator, Harriette Chandler,
On July 17, Harriette Chandler Violated the Mass. Constitution and Lied About It; She Plans to do it Again this Year Please Tell Harriette Chandler: She, of all People, Must Obey the Law What an Embarrassment to all of Worcester County!! On July 17, your Senator at the State House, Harriette Chandler, voted to adjourn a Constitutional Convention on Beacon Hill without voting on a citizen referendum for an Amendment to the state Constitution despite this: Many Are Outraged about Sen. Chandler Many are outraged at this illegal conduct. If we allow this violation of our Constitution to stand, then our referendum system, which was established by the Progressives in 1918, has been thrown into the trashcan. When one man, such as Tom Birmingham, can order Legislators, such as Harriette Chandler, to violate their oath and the state laws in this manner, we have become a lawless society. Before the July 17 vote, Tom Birmingham and others had attempted to defeat the "Protection of Marriage" Amendment by a series of crude and libelous attacks and dirty tricks. When they realized they were failing and that more than 60% of the citizens were still solidly behind the Amendment, they decided they had to break the law because if it went to a vote of the people, they would surely lose. Bay Windows wrote that the Amendment was sent to the Public Service Committee because it was "the one most likely to give it an unfavorable review." And Sen. Chandler was named as Chair because she is a "strong opponent of the proposal." The paper reported that Birmingham "engineered" the vote to adjourn the July Constitutional Convention without debating or voting. And Sen. Chandler was his chief. The report from Sen. Chandler's Committee was so full of lies (there is no other word that will describe them) that even a very gentle article from the Mass. Catholic church wrote that Chandler's report made "claims so extreme and so utterly unsubstantiated that it is an embarrassment." As an example, the following hysterical lie came from Sen. Chandler and her Committee in a blatant, calculated attempt to damage the measure. She wrote, "The effects of this amendment would be far reaching. It would be bad for business and bad for labor. Massachusetts would not only allow discrimination, but require it, forbidding employers from granting key benefits to their employees, hampering employers' efforts to recruit and retain workers by offering fair, competitive benefits, and making it unconstitutional to bargain collectively for important employee rights and benefits." The truth is that a simple reading of the Amendment shows that any company or other private institution could provide any benefits to anyone it wishes. There is absolutely no question about that. There is no effect - none, zero, zilch - on private companies. As for government employees, the Legislature is forbidden only in enacting an across-the-board benefit package which is "marriage" by another name as has happened in Vermont. They remain free to skillfully craft benefits for those non-traditional citizens that they wish to help. But they cannot enact "marriage" by another name. As for children, they will continue to be protected under state law as they are now. The most obvious accomplice to all this is the Boston Globe and its owner, the New York Times. The Globe was so brazen that it encouraged Sen. Birmingham, right in its news columns, to break the law. The Times has long been an active supporter of gay marriage. According to an editorial in the August 19 issue of Bay Windows, the other people most prominent in the opposition to the Marriage Amendment were NOW, ACLU, AFL-CIO and the Anti-Defamation League, while the gays appeared to not be interested. It was like pulling teeth to get gays to contribute to the effort, one activist said. "This confirms what we have been saying," says Sarah McVay Pawlick, President of Mass. Citizens for Marriage. "This is not primarily about homosexuality. It's about a powerful, extreme liberal agenda to change our sexual morality. These extreme liberals are seeking big government, with a socialist state similar to Sweden or Cuba, and a sexually promiscuous society in which children belong to the state, not their parents. "That's why the national, liberal organizations are so interested in what is happening up here in Massachusetts, even though we're far from New York. They're hiding behind homosexuals and others to achieve their objectives. They wish to diminish the institution of marriage which has been the bedrock of our country since its founding. When the state was first founded, everyone knew what 'marriage' meant. So it was never written down. But it's obvious to everyone that we must do so now." What Were the Dirty Tricks? Bay Windows acknowledged two dirty tricks in its August 19 editorial. (The editorial was so embarrassing to them that they have removed it from their website, although they obviously cannot do so from their print papers.) These dirty tricks concerned "blockers" and a fraud about horses. It was the ACLU which trained hundreds of blockers to harass the voters as they attempted to sign the petition last fall, according to Bay Windows. This was an illegal violation of voting rights under the U.S. Constitution. This illegal confrontation caused everyone to worry about the safety of the petition gatherers and forced MCM to go to the expense of hiring paid gatherers. The Bay Windows editorial bragged, "As a result, the petitioners received thousands fewer signatures than they otherwise would have." The right to solicit signatures in public places is clear and is protected by both the U.S. and Massachusetts Constitutions, according to a Memorandum from the Secretary of State dated August 30, 2001. The blockers operated at shopping centers and malls. One ACLU lawyer, Norma Shapiro, says she trained many of the blockers. She told Bay Windows that she trained them not to interrupt people while they're speaking and to talk politely. But pictures of the blockers in action, taken by a hidden camera, tell an entirely different story. Another dirty trick was a libelous lie against the supporters of the Amendment which was heavily publicized by both the Boston Globe and its owner, the New York Times. They wrote that many were deceived into signing the petition because they were tricked into thinking they were signing a petition to stop the slaughter of horses. But this story about trickery and deceit turned out to be a complete hoax. However, both the Globe and the Times continued to report it in an effort to destroy the Amendment. The New York Times joined with a large story on Sunday, April 7, in its national edition which went out across the entire country -- only three days before the first hearing on Beacon Hill! There was absolutely nothing new in the story. They reported the names of only three people who complained about being tricked. Only a few days later a judge in Boston quietly (because this was never reported by either paper) dismissed a bogus lawsuit which had been brought by the horse people to force the state to accept their petition even though they didn't get enough signatures. Two lawyers from the prestigious Boston law firm of Palmer & Dodge, Atty. Neil P. Arkuss and Atty. George Ticknor, plus artists and staff from the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord, are the people who were behind the slander and libel of the sponsors of the Protection of Marriage Amendment. ******* We Are Massachusetts
Citizens for Marriage. We believe every child deserves a mother and a father. We can never achieve that goal, because no one can change human nature. Some parents will not be good ones. But it is worth striving for. We believe that almost everyone would choose to have both a mother and a father if he or she were being born again. That's why we're sending the Protection of Marriage Amendment to the people to decide if they agree. Sarah McVay Pawlick, President This entire story has been extensively reported by Massachusetts News in its print edition and at www. massnews.com, 781-239-3305. 
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Attorney General Tom Reilly had ruled this was proper
for the voters to decide.
Justice 
