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"There are very few laws on the books that I can say that I'm ashamed that they're on the books," said State Senator Mark Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat. He said he opposed the law because of the "immorality of discrimination."
Mark, you oppose the law because you're a politician. Cut the !@#.
"This is a very simple law, contrived in shame, and it exists in shame and we ought to wipe it off the books," he said.
Funny you should say that. I feel the same way about the Massachusetts Ridiculous Supreme Court decision called "Goodridge vs. the Department of Public Health."
"The 1913 law is a shadow, a terrible shadow. It represents a segregationist past that is best put to rest and put to rest quickly," said Senator Harriette Chandler, a Worcester Democrat.
Hey, Harriette, babe...you -- or your predecessors -- shoulda thought of that earlier. But then, you guys really didn't care about that "shadow" (your word, not mine) before, did you?(The law in question originated when Massachusetts tried to prevent interracial couples from crossing into their lily-white state to marry. So much for The Commonwealth's Much Vaunted History of Tolerance.)
Okay, Mark, Harriette, et al: quick question:
How come it took you guys — and by "you guys" I mean the much hailed (erroneously, if anybody has ever, for example, lived in Boston already knows) Liberal Folks for Equal Rights for People of Color almost a century to repeal the law???
Don't know? I didn't think so.
Another question:
Since most states still don't recognize same-sex "marriage," what good will this move do? For the folks you're trying to "help," I mean. Because once they go back home, chances are their "marriage" won't really be worth bleep. Don't care? I didn't think so.
So what's the point?
"Well, Kelly...it's all that wedding cake income, for crying out loud!"
Ah, yes! I'd forgotten, forgive me. And double shame on me, since the story appeared just today (July 15) in today's City Section of The Boston Globe.
A few hilarious, except they're so sad, snippets...on the "boomlet":
A study conducted for the state's Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development predicts that an economic boomlet in hotel bookings, banquets, and wedding cakes would result from repealing a 1913 state law that prevents gay and lesbian couples from most other states from marrying in Massachusetts.
Morality, personal liberty, and constitutional law have been the usual battlegrounds in the fight over gay marriage. Now Governor Deval Patrick's administration is injecting something a bit more pedestrian to the debate: economic development.
Way to fight for "equality," Deval...you capitalist devil, you!
Consider these numbers: An estimated 32,200 same-sex couples from elsewhere would travel to the state to get married over the next three years. That would pump $111 million into the economy and yield another $5 million in marriage license fees and sales and occupancy taxes.
Hey, that's the way to show How Much We Care about our homosexual friends. Tax 'em! It's a Massachusetts tradition, after all...make 'em feel like "family."
And, incidentally, rob California of those wealthy New Yorkers!
The study [performed -- surprise! -- by a group which studies stuff like this] considered a host of factors, including the percentage (roughly half) of the 22,000 same-sex Massachusetts couples counted by the US Census Bureau who have married here already, the typical expenditures for tourists visiting the state for two days and one night, and the likelihood that most same-sex New Yorkers wishing to marry - given that Governor David Paterson in May directed all state agencies there to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states - would travel to Massachusetts, not California, for their vows.
California, watch out...Deval's cooking up something to rob you guys blind.
"If that bill comes to me, I will sign it and sign it proudly," Patrick said yesterday.
Unconfirmed are rumors that the governor is licking his chops as he perfects his recipe for "Deval's Same-Sex Wedding Cake."
