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Speaker Finneran: We Demand a Vote Next Week! Mr. Speaker: We are not going to just sit and watch during 2004 as most of the state did in 2002 after you and Tom Birmingham violated our Constitution. We are demanding a vote in the House next week on the removal of Margaret Marshall and three other judges as filed by Rep. Emile Goguen. Such a vote is required by the state Constitution whenever a “Bill of Address” is filed. Any vote must be by all 160 members of your House, not just 15 hand-picked friends of yours who have been appointed by you to some committee. We were constantly assured in 2002 by Gerry D’Avolio at the Catholic Conference and by Ron Crews at the Mass. Family Institute that you were 100% on our side. They honestly believed you were. (They were doing all of the lobbying for our Protection of Marriage Amendment and we were not involved in day-to-day decisions by the staff.) You can not deny that our Constitution was violated on Wednesday, July 17, 2002. But you say that Birmingham did it and not you. In any event, your House (160 members) and Birmingham’s Senate (40 members) refused to vote on our Amendment, despite the fact that 500 citizens had flooded the State House to watch the vote. You and Birmingham were so flagrant that even Margaret Marshall and her SJC unanimously told Jane Swift on December 20, 2002 that your people had broken the Constitution. But we didn’t need her to say so. Any idiot could see that. First Became Involved to Help You We first got into this business in May 2000 after Gerry D’Avolio, who we had never met before, invited us to a meeting at the Catholic Conference to get some help for you. He told us you were “hanging by your fingernails” in your successful effort to stop domestic partnerships from being enacted in the House (it had already passed the Senate) and you needed help. Ed had just been shocked, as a lawyer, to read the decision of the Vermont Supreme Court in the early months of 2000. It was immediately apparent to him that if we allowed lawyers to be in charge of marriage, our whole society was going to crumble and change forever. Marriage would no longer be the enduring institution that had been created 4000 years ago by the Jews and affirmed 2000 years later by Christianity. If this passed in Massachusetts, a marriage ceremony would be just another contract. Children and family would not be considered, only the desires of the two contracting parties. This, of course, is what the extremists at NOW have been seeking since their creation in 1966. They believe that women don’t need men anymore and can do nicely without them. The most extreme believe that with mutual masturbation and artificial conception they’ll be much happier as lesbians. Their ultimate aim is to remove the training of all children from their parents and have them raised by the government as in Sweden or Cuba, to be sure they are all treated equally. The “ultimate parasite” is the stay-at-home mom who does not work and spoils her children. According to this new lifestyle, sexual gratification will be the paramount consideration in a person’s life, just like “any other animal.” After hearing Gerry’s passionate plea for help for you, Sally convinced Ed we had to do something even though Ed was already overloaded with Mass. News since selling Lawyers Weekly in 1997. So we started Mass. Citizens for Marriage in 2000. One Terrible Ride To put it mildly, we have been toiling nonstop on this for years, only to learn that you are only playing games. As you know, we became very suspicious a couple of weeks ago, particularly after your lawyer, Lou Rizoli, refused to talk with Ed for even one minute, or even with Rep. Goguen, because Rizoli was “too busy” on the budget. In order to be sure we were not being unfair, we sent a letter FedEx to both you and Rizoli last Wednesday. We have not heard a word since then. We know that the people at the Catholic Conference still believe in your integrity because one of them personally criticized Brian Camenker at Article 8 a few weeks ago for being too “aggressive” with legislators. Camenker responded by asking what they had ever received in return for being nice to legislators in this state. As you are aware, the Catholics gave up after July 2002 because they had their own problem with homosexual priests and MFI went flying back to Colorado for more orders from James Dobson. Sally was left alone with many discouraged citizens. She and volunteers began politely picketing Jane Swift’s office for weeks and appeared to be making progress, but it was all total phoniness on Swift’s part. Ed had to virtually abandon MassNews and work fulltime helping MCM. He filed a lawsuit within a few weeks because he could find no lawyer in the state who would even consider suit. The SJC eventually ruled that neither Sally Pawlick nor anyone had any right to sue; all they could do was waste another two years of their lives, spend another $1.7 million and hope that you might allow a vote the next time. But Ed was successful into frightening Jane Swift into asking the SJC for a statement as to what was required of her, which was exactly what Ed had requested from the court in his suit. Judge Marshall could not turn down the Governor’s request, and so she gave her ruling on December 20, 2002, that the Legislature had broken the Constitution. On January 2, 2003, we filed another suit, asking the SJC to send the Marriage Amendment on to the next Legislature as though it had been ratified by the previous one. While we didn’t win that one either, there were enormous benefits from the effort. Ed appeared before the Court two more times that year to argue against homosexual marriage, even though no other private lawyer was ever allowed before the Court to discuss the subject. He noticed a dramatic change during the four times he appeared before the Court since 2002. It was obvious the first times that they hadn’t even read his briefs, but in his last appearance on May 9, 2003, they appeared to be much more intent, particularly Judge Cordy, who eventually wrote the main dissent. Hoped We Were Wrong We have hoped that we are wrong, but the evidence is too clear. It is possible that you are on the side of marriage instinctively but not enough to threaten your career. Or is it possible that Gerry D’Avolio has told you, as he has many others, that the “Removal” process will never work? And he certainly is correct that it will never work if he can convince enough people that it won’t. It’s difficult to understand why Gerry would try to stop the only effort that will immediately stop homosexual marriage in its tracks. What could he have against Brian Camenker of the Article 8 Alliance, who conceived the idea and is being brilliant in its execution? Is it just jealousy that he didn’t think of it? This scandal could be the death knell of the national Democratic Party if we don’t settle the matter before the Convention begins. How would it look if the delegates were greeted by taxicab tops with a picture of you and these words: “Speaker Finneran, We Demand a Vote.” You needn’t have nightmares about that though. Undoubtedly, those signs have all been sold by now, but there is probably something even better. The concern by some in your leadership about all the money that is flowing into Massachusetts from across the world is a tremendous concern for all. It can only mean that the Democratic Party, state and national, is jumping through hoops to get more money from the mob. If it becomes necessary, we will be around forever. We’ve come too far to give up now. We still hope, however, that you can show us that we are wrong.
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