NY Journal News

History in Massachusetts

(Original publication: May 19, 2004)

Both President Bush and John Kerry applauded the perseverence, the resiliency, the courage of those who, as the president put it, "saw a great wrong, and won their case." Discussion about the events in Massachusetts, where gays and lesbians were making civil rights history by participating in the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages? Not on a day ruled by Electoral Politics 101.

Bush and Kerry appeared separately in Topeka, Kan., on Monday to applaud the sacrifices of those who fought the landmark civil rights battle Brown v. Board of Education, where the Supreme Court held a half-century ago that "separate but equal" schools were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Brown and its progeny set the stage for a series of legal victories for blacks challenging their second-class citizenry.

While championing the forces of fairness and equality in Kansas, the candidates might have expended just a smidget of political capital by applauding at the very least the courage of the trailblazers in Massachusetts, where same-sex couples were making civil rights history by marrying as, heretofore, only heterosexual couples could.

Instead, Bush opted for spite, renewing amid the Massachusetts cheer his support for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, a pet issue of his evangelical Christian base. Kerry, meanwhile, took a political powder: While he opposes gay marriage and a constitutional ban, he refused to comment on the history being made in his home state. Good politics for both, perhaps, but only bad news for the Constitution and notions of fairness and equality. It was just the kind of mealymouthed leadership and blurrying of positions, between Republicans and Democrats, that inspires the kind of protest candidacy of one Ralph Nader, the object of so many Democrats' disaffection.

Had either Bush or Kerry bothered to highlight the constitutional fight in Massachusetts, they might have seized upon this scene outside the Cambridge city hall early Monday, as described in an e-mail from East Boston resident and former New Yorker Lisa Spadafora, 34, who was among the throngs picking up marriage-license applications:

"When you walked out of the building, 4 o'clock in the morning, there was still this small group of people, most not waiting for anyone in particular, just there to cheer and clap and cry with you. There was a guy, I'm guessing in college, who was asking everyone who came out for their autograph, collecting the signatures with such enthusiasm that you could tell how much it meant to him, to be there at the moment when we, as a people, could say, 'Yes, this is who we are,' and have it celebrated as if that were the most natural thing in the world."

They saw a great wrong, and won their case.