This would be funny if it didn’t illustrate how whacked our state has become. Two of the Democrat gubernatorial candidates are fighting over which one is more liberal on gay marriage. Deval Patrick, who most people agree is the most liberal candidate, is criticizing Attorney General Tom “Where’s the camera” Reilly for following the rules and his doing his job, by which I mean, certifying a ballot question for a constitutional amendment on marriage.
Gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick blasted rival Attorney General Tom Reilly’s decision to certify a ballot question seeking to ban gay couples from marrying, a move Reilly defended while stating his support for same-sex marriage.
Reilly said he followed state constitutional law in allowing a ballot initiative defining marriage as between one man and one woman to go on the ballot in 2008, and subsequently defending the move before the state’s highest court. But Patrick said the issue should not be subject to a vote. “He didn’t have a constitution obligation to certify the question (and) I wish he hadn’t because all it has done is prolong a debate that most of us have had enough of,” Patrick said.
The law says that in order for the voters to get a question on the ballot, they must get enough certified signatures to equal a certain percentage of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election. The supporters of marriage did so and Reilly did his job. But Patrick is one of those Massachusetts liberals who thinks that the law doesn’t apply to him when it’s for a “good” reason. Like all those liberal state legislators who refuse to roll back the “temporary” state income increase passed in 1989 and kept in force ever since, even after a referendum demanding the rollback was approved by a majority of voters. But what does that matter? The legislators know who’s in charge and they know that voters will keep putting them back in office no matter how much they ignore them.
But don’t think Reilly’s off the hook here. He took the opportunity to re-state his support for gay marriage. Great.
Technorati Tags:election, liberalism, Massachusetts, politics, same-sex marriage
