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Mitt Romney is told to go suck it (and it just so happens that, in Massachusetts, it’s still legal for him to suck it)
The Massachusetts state Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that lame-duck Governor Mitt Romney and his buddies can’t force the state legislature to vote on whether or not the 2008 ballot should include a proposed amendment banning gay marriage. Romney filed this lawsuit, as a private citizen (as opposed to in his capacity as state Governor), because he was pissed off that the state legislators have been postponing a vote on the issue. Particularly because if they don’t vote on in when they return from recess on January 2, which is the last day of the current session, it will effectively be dead in the water (because it has to be approved in two consecutive sessions before being included on a statewide ballot, and there wouldn’t be enough time to do that for the 2008 ballot if it doesn’t get approval this term).
The court made its ruling on the simple basis that it didn’t believe that it had the authority to force a vote on the issue. But it did go on to say that the legislature should get on with the vote already because they’re effectively blocking the progress of a citizen initiative, and that sort of defeats the purpose of having citizen initiatives. So it should be interesting to see if the legislators do put this to a vote next Monday (it’s worth noting that they have managed to find the time to vote on making the garter snake the official Massachusetts reptile).
Now, a cynic might say that Romeny only really cares about this issue because he’s planning a Presidential run and he wants to show the uber-conservative base that he’s against the fact that his hippy-liberal state legalized it for them gays to run off and get married. But I’m not cynic, so I’m not saying that.
