Goose the Blog 2.0

You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society.^*

Massachusetts Lawmakers Reject Bid to Stop Same-Sex Marriages
Constitutional Amendment Is Defeated in 157 to 39 Vote

BOSTON, Sept. 14 -- Amid a pep-rally atmosphere, Massachusetts legislators on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to halt same-sex marriages here -- showing how quickly gay nuptials have moved from being a court-ordered imposition to a powerful political cause.

By a vote of 157 to 39, members of the House and the Senate meeting together voted down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have eliminated the same-sex marriages legalized two years ago and replaced them with "civil unions" for gay couples.

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Since the first one on May 17, 2004, more than 6,100 gay couples have wed, accounting for about 17 percent of all the state's weddings during that period.

Each one made the idea of same-sex marriage more acceptable, observers say.

The differences were noticed by politicians, who say they started getting more letters in favor of the marriages, and by public-opinion pollsters, who noted in March that 56 percent of state residents believed same-sex marriages should be allowed.

"It's one of those areas of politics where people have become accustomed to something that was once radical," said Julian E. Zelizer, a history professor at Boston University. "It's just normative at this point."

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* That's sarcasm, folks.