Probing Questions from Listeners
We asked Attorney J. Edward Pawlick, founder/owner
of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly from 1972 to 1997, to answer
these questions from radio listeners.
He started Lawyers Weekly newspaper in his home after becoming sole parent
(no nannies) of his four children, 4, 6, 8, and 10. When he
sold Lawyers Weekly, he had forty lawyers, twenty lay writers
plus 60 other people instructing lawyers in seven states about
the newest cases and statutes in their jurisdictions, plus
a national edition across the country. His newspapers were
acknowledged as the best in the country. |
Dear Editor: Sally's WRKO message does not give
followable suggestions. Who are the judges you suggest be
removed? What is the viable process to do this? The WRKO message
is an uncertain trumpet call.
Roland O. Peterson, Waltham
Atty. Pawlick's
Comment: The gay marriage ruling from the Supreme Judicial
Court in Nov. 2003 was a 3-3 decision with the six Associate Justices
evenly divided. They are all liberal judges who are appointed for
life on our highest court.
Three of those judges wrote that the gay marriage ruling
could only be made by the Legislature. They were passionate in their
written ruling and said the Court did not have the power to do this.
They said that allowing this would allow the operation of a rogue
court.
This 3-3 tie vote allowed
Chief Justice Margaret Marshall to break the tie and impose her
will upon the state. She
had appeared before the Gay and Lesbian Bar Association in 1999
and assured them they would win a suit for gay marriage if they
filed here in Massachusetts. Needless to say, this was highly
unethical and illegal, but there is no one to correct it. The federal
courts have no jurisdiction in this state matter and there is no
one higher than Judge Marshall in Massachusetts.
This looks grim EXCEPT
that John Adams wrote our state Constitution in 1780 and provided
that the Legislature could fire any judges that the citizens did
not like. A judge can be fired for any reason. Of course, Adams
was a highly qualified, trial lawyer who realized that no Senator
or Rep would recklessly vote to fire a judge because he would have
to explain to the voters why he voted as he did, regardless of how
he voted.
A Resolution has been
filed in 2005 by Rep. Emile Goguen (D-Fitchburg) to fire Judge Marshall
and the three Associate Justices who signed her ruling on gay marriage.
They are Judge Roderick Ireland, Milton; Judge John Greaney, Westfield;
and Judge Judith Cowin, West Newton.
The Speaker of the House,
Sal DiMasi (D-Boston) gave a solemn promise to Rep. Goguen that
he would call for a fair, publicized vote on the Resolution this
year, but
DiMasi is now saying he's too busy to do so. He has already
violated the Constitution by sending the Resolution to a Committee
which is forbidden. If Goguen's Resolution could be sent like a
normal bill to a Committee of 6, 16 or 60, it would allow a small
group of politicians to decide the issue, instead of having each
Rep and Senator publicly make his or her own decision. If Rep. DiMasi
is successful in sneaking this by the voters for some reason that
only he knows, he will become the fifth Democrat to commit political
suicide by urging the violation of the state Constitution in order
to help gay marriage. Most, like Rep Goguen, fear that the Party
is destroying itself over gay marriage.
Your Radio
Message Was Interesting, Please Tell Me More
I am just looking for
a clear message from this group so that I can decide if I support
it or not.
Thanks,
Brian Rerecich, Sturbridge
Attorney
Pawlick's Comment
I
had a friend at Williams College who was gay. He was very talented
but died at age 35, which was sad. One of my first employees at
Lawyers Weekly was gay and he was one of our best. I hired others
in top management. But they understood that I thought their lifestyle
was very foolish. I did
not try to change them because I knew it would be fruitless. They
still send me cards at Christmas.
We at MCM do not approve
of civil unions because legally, it is the same as marriage. No
difference at all in most states, just the name has been changed.
In addition, male homosexuals have no desire to get married. That
is the furthest thing from their minds.
Please search massnews.com
for free for the latest news. For background information, search
Massachusetts Citizens
for Marriage.
Lawyer/Mother Says MCM Is Spreading "Hatred, Fear and Bigotry"
I just heard your advertisement on WRKO. I was intrigued,
so I went to your website. I have yet to read one reasonable
argument against homosexual marriage. I thought I would find
one on your website, but I did not.
I am a heterosexual
married mother, and I am also an attorney. I would like just
one legitimate reason why I should feel that my traditional
marriage is somehow in danger because homosexuals now have the right
to marry.
The children argument
does not work with me. Children deserve to be in a loving
home with caring and capable providers, no matter who they may be.
If children are lucky enough to live in a home with a mother and
a father, then that's wonderful. That, however, is not the
case in the majority of the nation, and that has nothing at all
to do with homosexual marriage, and everything to do with the state
of heterosexual marriage.
Please let me
know why I should feel threatened by this and please tell me why
you feel it is your duty to spread hatred, fear and bigotry around
Massachusetts and across the airways.
(Name Withheld)
Attorney
Pawlick's Comment
Good to have you with us, Atty. (name),
but I'm disconcerted to discover that we are spreading "hatred"
in Massachusetts. This is particularly true in that you have cited
nothing, except your gut instinct, for that statement.
Excuse me for appearing a little upset,
but you say you "went" to our website. That is not true.
If you had done that, you would have found intelligent discussions
about many issues. It's disappointing, but not surprising, that
a new, inexperienced lawyer would exhibit her lack of knowledge
so publicly.
Your problems are exacerbated because
many people can still remember when the practice of law was mainly
a noble profession and not just a licensing procedure like barber
shops. When Lawyers Weekly was founded in 1972, there were 15,000
lawyers in Massachusetts; whereas, without much change in population,
there are probably around 80,000 today, all of you trying very hard
to make a living in some manner.
As for gay marriage, please search our
website for "Lukey wrong" for a 2002 article about the
President of the elite Boston Bar, Joan Lukey. You will find several
discussions with and about her autocratic decision on gay marriage
without her bothering to consult the members of the BBA.
That's just a start to what you can find
on our website.
To understand the depth of the attacks
against me personally, please go to the Boston Globe website. Search
there for "pawlick and fringe." You will see an article
from April 14, 2004 telling all lawyers not to buy Lawyers Weekly
anymore because it might benefit my activity in favor of traditional
marriage. Do you know anything about "secondary boycotts?"
If so, I would like to know if this effort by the New York Times
Company (owner of the Globe) was in the nature of that.
Anyhow, we are getting our message out
past the powerful, wealthy, multinational New York Times Company
by radio messages and by airplane banners.
The following three words answer your question
why your family is threatened by gay marriage. "Judge Maria Lopez." Everyone has
a legitimate fear of that person, even the reporters at the Boston
Globe as we clearly indicate on our site. TV38 has done us a huge
favor by announcing that Judge Lopez will soon be starring in her
own show. This is happening because the Boston Globe is losing its
fight to indoctrinate children in the schools where parents are
becoming more savvy. Therefore, the people that you seem to favor
is planning a TV show on Channel 38 starring Judge Lopez every afternoon
right in our homes on television. They say it will be "entertaining."
Your child will soon be old enough to join in.
You will enjoy this response from one of our
editors a little more.
Response from An Editor At MassNews:
I appreciate the opportunity to express
my thoughts on your letter. In your request for a "legitimate
argument" against homosexual marriage, I would like to point
out first that a presupposition is being made that needs to be addressed.
You are beginning with the assumption that the onus is on those
against gay marriage to prove that it is legally wrong. However,
that is not correct. With 6,000 years of human history
employing the concept of “marriage”, a consistent meaning established
in our language, and more importantly to the current situation,
the Massachusetts State Constitution explicitly framing it’s
marriage laws in terms of opposite sex partners, it is those who
seek to establish the legality of same-sex marriage who are in need
of providing a “legitimate argument”.
Part of the travesty of
the Goodridge decision is that some of the judges who made the decision
had been very verbal in their personal opinion that gay marriage
was a civil right (despite the fact that it was, and still is contrary
to the Massachusetts Constitution) and had coached the plaintiffs
in bringing the suit. Those judges should have recused themselves.
If you read the transcript from the case, it is clear that
several of the judges, rather than uphold the Constitution they
are sworn to defend, simply badgered the state’s attorney with questions
irrelevant to the case, and never let her make a definitive statement
on behalf of the State of Massachusetts.
Regarding the idea of
a hetereosexual's marriage being “threatened” by gay marriage, I
am glad yours is not. Nor is mine. I don’t think
anyone is suggesting anything of the such. However, it is clear that what is at stake is the eventual deconstruction
of the institution as a whole.
Consider this simple question:
Traditionally and legally, marriage in the Western world
has always been between one man and one woman.
The Goodridge decision essentially declared that gender has
nothing to do with the definition of marriage, and substituted the
arbitrary definition that marriage was simply between two people.
Now, if a court can redefine marriage as such, and strike
down the idea that it is between one man and one woman, can anyone
deny that marriage between “two” people is not equally arbitrary?
Why not between three people? Or four?
Or one thousand? You
can’t fall back on “because marriage has always been just two people”
because marriage has also been historically between opposite genders.
Lastly, your statement
on Mass Citizens for Marriage spreading “hatred, fear, and bigotry”
comes across as a bit hysterical. That is certainly not our intention, nor do
I think that is accurate. We
deal almost exclusively with the question from a legal and logical
standpoint. Feel free to peruse the archives of MassNews
to see if this is not so.
