New Marriage Amendment Gets Judiciary Hearing on Today
       As a precursor to a vote at the Consitutional Convention, the Judiciary Committee on Beacon Hill will hear testimony on the new Marriage Amendment which was written to define marriage in Massachusetts as being between "one man and one woman". The Constitutional Convention will open in May.
       The hearing today will begin at 10:00 in Hearing Room A-1 at the State House. The Amendment will go to a vote sometime between May 10 and July 31. It needs only 25% of the legislature’s vote (50 Reps or Senators) to proceed. If it receives that this year, as well as during the Constitutional Convention during the next legislative session in 2007, it will go on the ballot in 2008 for a vote by the voters of the state.
       In 2001, Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage sponsored an Amendment that forbad both gay marriage and civil unions and certified enough signatures that got it to the Constitutional Convention in 2002. However, in a move that the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled was illegal and unconstitutional, the legislature adjourned the Convention without ever taking a vote on the Amendment that was before it. (Click Here) Governor Swift refused to reconvene the Constitutional Convention and the petition died without a vote as a result of pressure from the New York Times/Boston Globe conglomerate.
       Proponents of the current Amendment are trusting that the legislature won’t simply do the same thing either this year or next year to what they did to the 2001 petition.
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