Score one for the good guys...

Headline: Mass. Senate Votes to Repeal Marriage Law

BOSTON - The Democrat-controlled state Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to repeal the 1913 law that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney is using to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts. [link]

I did find it a little strange that the article framed it as a move by the "Democrat-controlled" state Senate given that the division over gay marriage seemed to ignore party lines. After all, it was a "Democrat-controlled" constitutional convention that passed the initial amendment to ban gay marriage. But I guess that's neither here nor there. It's too bad it probably won't get enough votes in the House to override the Romney veto that's sure to follow. Alas, a small victory.

I've been deeply offended that Romney has been trying to enforce his beliefs (which, he claims, "has nothing to do with discrimination") with an archaic law that, from my understanding, was enacted specifically to bar the recognition of interracial marriages:

According to Mary Bonauto, a lawyer at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the law was first proposed in 1912 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, a body of judges, professors, scholars, and law practitioners concerned with creating roughly equal statutes from state to state. The law, which was adopted in only five states (Louisiana, which later repealed it, Massachusetts, Vermont, Illinois, and Wisconsin), was in part intended to uphold laws in other states that barred interracial marriages Conference documents explaining the law's intent state: "As to marriages against the public policy of any state, e.g. marriages with [criminal intent], or with a minor without parental consent, . . . or between a white and a colored person . . . this act, being general in its terms, will apply to all of these states and give full effect to the prohibitory laws of each state by making void all marriages contracted in violation of such prohibitions." [link]

That's an attack on me personally. It didn't even need to go there for me to care about this issue. But, well... there it is.