perfidy

Andrew Sullivan (who else?) notes that when Massachusetts Speaker of the House Tom Finneran leaves office this week, resistance to gay marriage in the state legislature goes with him. The new Speaker, Salvatore DiMasi, is far more socially liberal and his ascendency is expected to defuse what little resistance remains. Even the resistance thinks so.

A key legislative backer of the proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage and establish civil unions yesterday all but declared defeat, saying that Finneran's exit from Beacon Hill was the final straw in an effort that already was in trouble because the state has legalized same-sex marriage with little of the uproar predicted by opponents.

"It is pretty much over," said Senate minority leader Brian P. Lees, a Springfield Republican who cosponsored the amendment with Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. The House and Senate, sitting in a constitutional convention, must vote a second time in the next session before it could go to the voters on the 2006 ballot.

"In fact, there will be a question as to whether the issue will come up at all," Lees said. He said the issue has faded to the "back burners of Massachusetts politics," because few problems have surfaced with the implementation of the Supreme Judicial Court's decision to legalize gay marriage.

Observes Sullivan,

The real reason is that the change has become a non-event. The relatively small number of marriages for same-sex couples has barely made a dent in the social fabric and the upheaval of a constitutional amendment seems to many too big a deal for such a minor social change.

This is dead on. Outside the media-visible enclaves of downtown Boston, Cambridge, and Amherst/Northampton, Massachusetts is a part-Catholic part-postPuritan blue-collar state with a large population of recent Latino immigrants and a traditionalist streak a mile wide. In short, most of the state falls into the general category of "people who might really hate this gay marriage thing." And yet, it's here, they're queer, and from what I can see everyone is, in fact, used to it. Outside your fire 'n' brimstone pulpit parties where I'm sure the issue still surfaces any time a preacher needs some shorthand for "worldly depravity," nobody freaking cares. Non-issue. Whoopeedeedoo.

In short, my question to the dozens of states who have either passed or are trying to pass anti-gay[marriage] legislation is: Where's the fire, Mary?