Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

That book pretty much describes my day today. (Let's just say it started with my dog eating an enormous and particularly unhealthy-looking human turd in the park as I watched in horror, unable to catch her.) When I got home I found this article in my inbox, via Google Alerts. It reports that a recent, fairly credible poll found that 51 percent of Americans favor a law banning gay marriage. So not only have I had a brutally crap day today, but these randomly selected Americans would like to tell me that they hope I never find love and happiness. In fact, they'd like to see legislation preventing me from finding love and happiness.

But then it struck me: That's what this is all about. The whole idea of banning gay marriage is to make gay people feel that they don't deserve happiness. And whoever is polling on gay marriage right now is on their side. Hasn't gay marriage been polled enough? Wasn't there just a spate of polling in November? Is there any new legislation to prompt new polling?

Nope. Gay marriage is quite definitively illegal (in many cases by both law and constitutional amendment) in all but one state, where the wheels are already in motion to make it illegal again.

Could Gay Marriage Withstand a Popular Vote in Mass.?

The Christian Science Monitor has an in-depth article about the current state of gay marriage in Massachusetts. The most recent polling indicates that 62 percent of Massachussans oppose amending the constitution. But there's an odd thing about polling related to discrimination: People lie. They are embarassed to tell a pollster that they will vote to quash the rights of minorities, but in the privacy of the polling booth the temptation to do so can be great. In the days just before the November election, an Arizona pollster told me that only 30 percent of those surveyed supported the Arizona anti-gay marriage amendment. The amendment did fail--becoming the first ever to do so--but only by a few percentage points. Popular support at 62 percent is not enough to be free of this phenomenon.

The sound byte for gay marriage supporters in Massachusetts has been that the civil rights of a minority should not be put to a popular vote. After all, as Equal Marriage puts it, "This is the basic guarantee of our constitutional democracy."

Massasuckthis

As for the Mass. legislature's vote: FUUUUUUUCK.

The vote is, however, only the first of two needed to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot.

Breaking News, Breaking Balls

Alaska: Giving same-sex partners access to insurance and other benefits would save the state about a million dollars a year.

I remain baffled by the Massachusetts high court decision calling on legislators to vote on a citizen petition to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, but CNN offers this bit of explanation:

The high court in its ruling rebuked lawmakers for [tabling the petition], saying drafters of the provision that allows citizen petitions "did not intend a simple majority of the joint session to have the power effectively to block progress of an initiative."

I suppose I'll have to take their word for it, but don't constitutions generally specify when a two-thirds majority is required?

The same decision that exhorted lawmakers to vote also rebuffed the attempt by the gay-bashing group Massachusetts Family Institute to sue lawmakers personally. The Advocate reports that the group's president has now turned to threatening legislators personally. "Lawyers take an oath to uphold the constitution," he said. "Any legislator who’s a lawyer should be very attentive to the ruling."

Homo News Review

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that legislators are, in fact, obliged to vote on a proposed amendment banning gay marriage. Opponents of the practice have been in a snit since the same court ruled in late 2003 that excluding same-sex partners from the institution of marriage ran afoul of the constitution. They gathered 170,000 signatures in order to put an amendment to the vote. Now they need only the approval of 51 legislators in two consecutive sessions. The legislators dodged the issue with a procedural vote, prompting Gov. Mitt Romney and a specially formed group called VoteOnMarriage.org to sue. VoteOnMarriage went so far as to sue the legislators personally. Romney also sued as an individual, giving a real whiff of how absurd his claims were. But, for reasons I can't understand, the court has decided that the legislators are obliged to vote—even though killing legislation with a procedural vote is far more common that voting on it. That, and a majority of Massachusetts residents support gay marriage. The court added that there is no legal remedy if the legislators do not vote. The only day remaining in the session is January 2, so stay tuned.

The outgoing Wisconsin attorney general submitted an opinion today arguing that the state's recently adopted amendment banning gay marriage does not invalidate domestic partner benefits or protections. The opinion is only advisory, however, because the state's high court has final say in interpreting the amendment.

Because Pope Benedict is so easy to dislike, I'm linking to this little ditty, which passes on Italian rumors that the pontiff is a homo (on the basis of his rather swank shopping habits) and quotes some real gems of pontifical homophobia.