Citizens, groups bombard Mass. legislators about gay marriage

BOSTON - Grandparents and children have been transformed into lobbyists. Parishioners are getting political advice during church services. Lawmakers have been so bombarded with e-mail that some have shut down their computer servers to catch up.

Fierce lobbying for and against gay marriage is under way in Massachusetts, where the nation's first legally sanctioned same-sex weddings could take place as early as this spring because of a groundbreaking ruling from the state's highest court.

The court has given legislators little or no way to prevent it from happening come May.

Instead, the lobbying is focusing ever more closely on next week's constitutional convention, where lawmakers will consider an amendment that would overturn the ruling and ban gay marriage if ratified by voters in 2006.

House Speaker Thomas Finneran said Thursday that lawmakers are looking for a way to prevent gay marriages from occurring in Massachusetts until the 2006 vote.

Lawmakers could ask the court to move back its May deadline for them to pass a law allowing gay marriage, or "there might be other things we can do," said Finneran, a Democrat. He declined to elaborate.

The debate has put this famously liberal state at the very center of one of the day's most volatile social issues.

"If we lose the fight in Massachusetts, what will happen everywhere else?" said Patrick Guerriero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay rights group. "What does that say to the moderate Democrat who's on the fence about the issue in Alabama?"

The issue has brought national organizations into the state to help organize vigils, direct mail campaigns, radio spots and newspaper ads.

The lobbying campaign began almost immediately after the state Supreme Judicial Court declared last November that gay couples are entitled under the state Constitution to all the rights of marriage.

Rallies, prayer sessions and pleas for equality have echoed through the Statehouse since then, with much of the debate centered on whether lawmakers should offer gay couples Vermont-style "civil unions."

But Wednesday, the court made it clear that gays are entitled to nothing short of marriage and that civil unions would not pass constitutional muster.

Rallies have been scheduled on nearly a daily basis leading up to the constitutional convention, when the state's 200 lawmakers - many of whom are Roman Catholic, and all of whom face re-election in November - may finally be forced to vote on an issue that many would prefer to avoid.

On Thursday, Massachusetts' Episcopal Bishop Tom Shaw was the featured speaker at a huge lobbying day at the Statehouse, sponsored by gay rights advocates. Opponents of gay marriage will counter on Sunday with a rally on the Boston Common, where Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean O'Malley will exhort the faithful to fight for the amendment.

Democratic Rep. Marie Parente, who has served in the Legislature for 23 years, said she does not recall an issue that has generated this level of public reaction. She had to turn off her e-mail server for three days to catch up with it all.

"That's never happened before," said Parente, who supports the amendment. "People are serious about this. This decision will affect so many lives and people know it."

If approved by more than 50 percent of the Legislature before the end of this year and then again during the 2005-06 session, the amendment would go on the ballot in November 2006.

Busloads of citizens are expected to converge on Boston on Wednesday to watch what could be a historic vote.

Regular citizens are being trained to lobby their elected representatives.

"Listen. Be kind. Be gentle. Tell them you're here to oppose any discrimination in the Constitution," Norma Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union told would-be lobbyists at a Statehouse meeting this week.

Across town, in blue-collar South Boston, Catholic parishioners received a different message during a community meeting at Gate of Heaven Church.

"The court's gay marriage decision will further confuse an already confused world," said the Rev. Ron Tecelli, a Jesuit priest and philosophy professor at Boston College. "Will you do nothing? Will I do nothing? That is the question I put to you."

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