IN 2003, in the case of Goodridge v. the Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found a right to same-sex marriage in our Constitution for all the majestic and principled reasons you know – and also because of what it could not find.
There was no “Defense of Marriage” Act in our state constitution to prohibit marriage equality, something that would have blocked the court from being able to issue its landmark decision. The story of how we stopped the “Defense of Marriage” amendment before the Goodridge ruling has never been fully told. And it’s a real banger of a tale.
First, let’s rewind to 1995. Pew Research started asking whether society should accept or discourage the existence of homosexuality. (Hard to remember, but that’s where we were.) Opinion was evenly divided.
That year, Utah was the first state to ban the alarming possibility of same-sex marriage. Then Congress passed a federal Defense of Marriage Act and President Bill Clinton signed it. A long line of 40 states fell like dominoes, passing their own “Defense of Marriage” Acts.
Longtime same-sex couples came out, told their stories, and tried to change hearts and minds. It never changed the result.
Fast forward to April 2001. The Goodridge case was filed with the Supreme Judicial Court, arguing for the freedom to marry. Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly argued in his brief that the court should instead defer to the Legislature to decide such matters.
Weeks later, on cue, a “Defense of Marriage” amendment to the state constitution, which would have limited marriage to heterosexual couples, was introduced in the Legislature via the initiative petition process. Under that process, an amendment requires the consent of only 25 percent of lawmakers, in two successive constitutional conventions, and the matter then goes to the ballot for voters to decide.
At that low threshold, it was politically and culturally impossible to stop the amendment from advancing. We needed a massive supermajority of 75 percent to kill the measure, or Massachusetts would be the next domino to fall.
Because passage in the Legislature was a certainty, our opponents focused on the only real challenge they faced: getting the required number of signatures on petitions to put the amendment on the statewide ballot.
The “Defense of Marriage” group relied on a paid signature-gathering company, and that’s where the effort – which seemed to be a glide path to victory – went awry. They cut corners. It turned out to be the fateful turn in the tale.
The signature-gathering company had been hired by two separate campaigns – the “Defense of Marriage” group and an organization seeking to ban the slaughter of horses to be used for meat.
The signature gatherers worked on both campaigns, carrying different petitions on lookalike forms. Both the “Defense of Marriage” and “Save Our Horses” campaigns paid for every signature. But “Defense of Marriage” paid much more, escalating from 40 cents to $1.50 each. What’s more, the signature gatherers also tricked people into signing the “Defense of Marriage” petition by explaining the horse protection measure but then handing them the clipboard for the marriage amendment.
Guess which one met the signature goal and which one failed?
Thousands of people signed the anti-gay-marriage petition believing they were supporting a ban on killing horses and grinding them into meat.
Later, we’d produce an affidavit saying how the paid canvassers were trained to steal signatures. But none of this was news, even at the time. The signature-gathering company was known to law enforcement in its home state of Arizona. Attorney General Reilly also knew about the fraud. For some reason, however, it was left up to us to prove it.
Google search had just been born in Silicon Valley a few years before, in 1998. Here in Boston, three of us met and sketched out the idea for a website with its own little search engine. Unlike votes on election day, initiative petition signatures are public information, on a database. What if people could type a name into a search box and see if it had landed on the wrong petition?
You can find the never-done-before site preserved in this Wayback Machine digital archive.
While MassEquality is known today for its state and local LGBTQ advocacy, back in 2002 it wasn’t much more than a domain name and a coalition of the willing. Most in the fledgling group disliked the idea of the name-search website but tolerated it. For the first time, you could see if your name was stolen – and see the names of all the other signatories, whether they were tricked into it or not.
One name that popped up on the site more than once? Romney. In March 2002, the Boston Globe reported that then-Governor Mitt Romney’s wife, a son, and a daughter-in-law had all signed the petition to stop any possibility of Goodridge in advance. Of course, they had not been among the tricked.
Proving the rampant signature fraud was key to persuading the legislative committee studying the measure to condemn it as “unacceptable” and “not properly before them.” We didn’t have the massive supermajority to win a vote on the merits – but we could convince lawmakers to walk away from such a flagrantly corrupted process.
Many Catholic lawmakers were publicly pressured from the pulpit at Sunday Mass. Long before the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry became a juggernaut, however, we had ACLU board member Holly Gunner and three Catholic priests willing to walk the State House halls on our behalf.
Legislators also took ACLU lobbyist Norma Shapiro very seriously. Norma was our calm, wise bubbe who worked side-by-side with the gay community’s legendary lobbyist, Arline Isaacson. Together, Norma and Arline drove our State House strategy, which could be boiled down to a simple idea: live to fight another day.
Attitudes about same-sex marriage would eventually change. Until they did? You delay, postpone, stall, adjourn, and wait. Losing marriage here, for the rest of America and likely for generations to come, was not something we could ever live with or explain away.
As the first, decisive 2002 constitutional convention approached, then-House Majority Leader Sal DiMasi decided to help. He bucked Speaker Tom Finneran who wanted to advance the “Defense of Marriage” Act quickly before the court could rule in Goodridge.
DiMasi hosted a meeting in his office for a group of carefully chosen House colleagues. He set out a large, lovely tray of cannoli on his conference table. Afterwards, everyone left to whip votes for postponing a vote on the amendment. Finally, the Senate president, the late Tom Birmingham, also agreed to postpone.
The message was clear: The Legislature was not going to discuss this, vote on it, or decide. In November, 2003, the SJC issued the Goodridge ruling establishing the right to same-sex marriage. In May 2004 – 20 years ago this week – the first couples were married.
In the years that followed, these couples took on the politicians and prevailing public opinion, and began changing hearts and minds. It’s the feel-good story you know.
But as historians often say, it’s a little more complicated than that. If not for the turn things took during those drama-filled days in 2002, instead of celebrating an historic human rights milestone this week, May 17 might still be known as the anniversary of the first televised baseball game in 1939.
What if there had been no $1.50 per signature shenanigans? What if the “Defense of Marriage” group hadn’t cheated and just collected their signatures honestly? Wouldn’t they have kneecapped the Goodridge decision?
These are questions that likely haunt them. Good.
Amy Corcoran Hunt was a member of the original, still-informal Campaign for Equality. She produced the original “search for your name” website, lobbied lawmakers, and took on opponents in a marriage debate blog the Boston Globe hosted during the decisive constitutional conventions. She was also the creative director of the first unscripted documentary-syle TV commercials on same-sex marriage.
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