Mass. legislature kills ballot initiative

The Massachusetts legislature voted to kill a voter initiative on whether to ban gay marriage in the state. As I previously reported, the legislature waited until the very last day to make a constitutionally required previous vote on the initiative. An AOL news article said,

BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts lawmakers threw out a proposed constitutional amendment Thursday that would have let voters decide whether to ban gay marriage in the only state that allows it.

The vote -- which came amid heavy pressure to kill the measure from Gov. Deval Patrick and legislative leaders -- was a devastating blow to efforts to reverse a historic 2003 court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage . . .

The ban needed 50 votes in consecutive sessions of the 200-seat Legislature to secure a place on the 2008 statewide ballot. At the end of the last session in January it passed with 62 votes, but this time it garnered just 45 . . .

More than 8,500 gay couples have married there since it became legal in May 2004.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute that backed the amendment, questioned the legality of what he said was rampant horse trading in the final hours, saying there was "tremendous pressure and we believe some tremendous incentives" to flip votes . . .

Outside the Statehouse on Thursday, hundreds of people rallied on both sides of the issue.

"We believe it's unconstitutional not to allow people to vote on this," said Rebekah Beliveau, a 24-year-old Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary student who stood with fellow college-age amendment supporters across the street from the Statehouse.

"We're standing up not necessarily on the issue of same-sex marriage, but our right to vote," she said. Advocates said they had gathered 170,000 signatures supporting the amendment; the secretary of state's office accepted 123,000 as valid . . .

I don't understand why the Massachusetts Constitution gives the legislature opportunities to kill ballot initiatives. I thought that the whole idea of ballot initiatives was to get away from the lobbying and horse-trading that goes on in legislatures. And the power of the legislature to kill initiatives is a disincentive to gather signatures for initiatives.