Supporters of the institution of marriage held rallies across Massachusetts on Sunday, a bitterly cold day that didn’t keep more than 2,000 people in three locations indoors. Of course, that 2,000 isn’t everybody who supports marriage. The Archdiocese of Boston is also planning events to educate people on the gay marriage issue.
The problem with rallies is that they tend to be designed more for publicity than anything else. The goal is often to get as many people as possible in a location so that the media notices and reports it and we can say “Look how many people support our side.” Of course, the supporters of the opposite side do the same thing and it becomes a war of numbers rather than a battle of ideas and truth.
On the other, such gatherings can be useful if the educate and motivate people to take action after the rally and if they bring people together for prayer.
Kudos to Democrat State Rep. Philip Travis who sounds like a Democrat I could vote for:
State Representative Philip Travis, a Rehoboth Democrat who filed legislation that would change the Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage, told the assembly the issue is the most important vote he’ll take in 22 years in the Legislature. He compared it to another historic court action—the US Supreme Court decision in 1973 that legalized abortion.
“This is equivalent to Roe v. Wade,” Travis said. “We run our government by a Legislature and a governor who pass laws, not a state judiciary, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who make laws from the bench.”
Exactly right. The Goodridge case is equivalent to Roe because it allows judges to supersede to the right of the people to pass laws by inventing constitutional rights. Once again we see it all comes back to the disastrous Griswold v. Connecticut decision on contraceptives that invented the federal constitutional right to privacy, which was used as the basis for Roe, for Lawrence v. Texas and other judicial overreaches.
Bev Baccelli, 54, of Mattapoisett, protested outside the Fall River rally along with her partner, Liz DiCarlo, 54. Baccelli, who is Catholic, said she probably knew many of the people inside and wanted to show them that gay marriage concerns people they know.
That’s another fallacy in the debate. Supporters of gay rights—and isn’t this old debate what all this about?—seem to think that opponents of gay marriage are just ingrained bigots and if only we knew the people we were “hurting” we would change our minds. I think they’ve watched one too many after-school specials. I know that she’s probably a decent person who genuinely thinks she’s doing the right thing. It doesn’t make it right. Her intentions, even her feelings don’t matter. What matters is whether it’s true and right and good for society.
I haven’t heard anything, Joanne. Maybe someone else has.
I should have been more precise. It’s a war of perceived numbers, i.e. people who show up at a rally, rather than the actual number of people who believe a certain way.
In this situation, what happens is that 2,000 people show up for a pro-marriage rally, but 3,000 show up for gay marriage. Does that mean more people in the public at large support gay marriage? No, but it becomes the perception.
I’m not against trying to get this to a public vote. I’m just saying that we have to be careful to focus our efforts where they will do the most good.