An Open Letter to Richard Ross
I write today not as Vice-Chair of the Mansfield RTC, but as a disappointed voter who happens to hold a position in your party.
In your letter of explanation about your vote on the marriage amendment, you talked about not wanting to put "the people of the commonwealth through the heartache of a hateful campaign of polarizing debate for 18 months. In any debate there will be people who take extreme positions or use mean-spirited arguments. Sadly, that's the reality of politics today.
What you seem to overlook, however, is that there is a legitimate question at the heart of the issue. Like it or not, society still decides what it will call an official "marriage," even post-Goodridge. Why can two men or two women now be recognized as a "marriage" when three men, four women, two cousins - or any other other combination - can not? Is that not a violation of those groups' civil rights, creating "second-class citizens" (to use the language of the Goodridge court)? How is that compatible with not judging people, as you describe in your story about your father? And who gets to decide? Based on your vote last week, it would seem you believe that role does not lie with the citizens of the Commonwealth.
You also talked about how, for the past two and a half years, your staff has been overwhelmed by the marriage issue. That's understandable. Homosexual marriage is a very important issue to many voters. If you do not have the courage to let debate happen, even if it may be ugly at times; if you can't handle the massive input from both sides of an issue, perhaps you are not cut out to be in the legislature.
I write today not as Vice-Chair of the Mansfield RTC, but as a disappointed voter who happens to hold a position in your party.
In your letter of explanation about your vote on the marriage amendment, you talked about not wanting to put "the people of the commonwealth through the heartache of a hateful campaign of polarizing debate for 18 months. In any debate there will be people who take extreme positions or use mean-spirited arguments. Sadly, that's the reality of politics today.
What you seem to overlook, however, is that there is a legitimate question at the heart of the issue. Like it or not, society still decides what it will call an official "marriage," even post-Goodridge. Why can two men or two women now be recognized as a "marriage" when three men, four women, two cousins - or any other other combination - can not? Is that not a violation of those groups' civil rights, creating "second-class citizens" (to use the language of the Goodridge court)? How is that compatible with not judging people, as you describe in your story about your father? And who gets to decide? Based on your vote last week, it would seem you believe that role does not lie with the citizens of the Commonwealth.
You also talked about how, for the past two and a half years, your staff has been overwhelmed by the marriage issue. That's understandable. Homosexual marriage is a very important issue to many voters. If you do not have the courage to let debate happen, even if it may be ugly at times; if you can't handle the massive input from both sides of an issue, perhaps you are not cut out to be in the legislature.
posted by Olivier Kozlowski | 3:28 PM
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