Massachusetts Marriage Update

Just about half an hour before this post, the Massachusetts Legislature voted down an initiative to change the state’s constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages.  The margin of defeat for the initiative (and therefore the margin of victory for same-sex marriage advocates) was five votes.  I have to think there will come a day when people will shake their heads in patronizing wonder at all the furor and angst over the idea that gay people might want to get married, too – much like today, we shake our heads over the raging arguments over slavery that dotted the first half of the nineteenth century in American public debate.  But it appears that the cutting-edge state has put this issue to rest once and for all.  There will be no Constitutional amendment; the legal and political processes have been exhausted with the result that people who want to get married, can do so, at least in Massachusetts.