BOSTON, March 26, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Massachusetts clerks are readying for homosexual “marriages”. Town and city clerks were notified by the Registry of Vital Records and Statistics that training to perform the services would begin in early May, in time for the prescribed May 17 date set by the Supreme Judicial Court last November. A spokeswoman for Governor Mitt Romney, controller of the Department of Public Health, denied knowledge of the training being offered. “I have no knowledge of training being scheduled,” Nicole St. Peter told the Boston Globe. “At the appropriate time, the administration will communicate with city and town clerks. Currently, it’s premature to do that.” Romney is considering asking the court to stay its decision, in light of a possible constitutional amendment before lawmakers this coming week. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference is beginning its first ever voter registration drive. The campaign aims to oust any politician who votes against the constitutional ban on homosexual ‘marriage’.
“Legislators who decide to vote to harm the institution of marriage—either by allowing same-sex marriage to stand unchallenged or by creating civil unions—will feel a backlash in November,” The Pilot, the official newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese, said in an editorial yesterday. The Senate amendment to allow civil unions for same-sex couples, but ban same-sex marriage passed a preliminary vote by 121-77 at the close of the last Constitutional Convention, set to resume Monday. A Boston Globe survey in January revealed that 67 percent of lawmakers are Catholic, and of these, 66 percent favor the amendment to allow civil unions. The Pilot, in a March 5th article from the Massachusetts Catholic Conference said that “A constitutional amendment recognizing both marriage and civil unions is no ‘compromise,’ since the civil union mandate accords all the benefits of marriage to same-sex unions except the name. On the one hand, the so-called compromise amendment defines marriage as an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman. On the other hand, it also recognizes a civil union between same-sex couples as the legal and constitutional equivalent of marriage. This is no compromise. It is a flat contradiction of terms and is worse than enacting no amendment at all. Our legislators must hear that we will not tolerate their support of such an amendment.” Read The Pilot story at: https://www.rcab.org/Pilot/2004/ps040305/Notes_from_the_Hill.html See the Boston Globe coverage at: https://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/03/26/church_sets_voter_drive_to_fight_gay_marriage/