Yesterday was supposed to be the big day for the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The Supreme Judicial Court had just ruled that the proposed amendment was legally kosher, the constitutional convention was slated to begin, and Senate President Travaglini had said he would make sure the amendment got a vote and wasn't postponed indefinitely by parliamentary maneuvers. (To get on the ballot, the amendment must be approved by two consecutive sittings of the full legislature. If it is
approved this year, it will have to be approved again in 2007-2008, and would then go to the voters.) Naturally, protesters for and against were out in force.

Perhaps seeking to forge consensus, the legislature did the one thing it could to unite the warring sides: it took no action, rendering the hard work of all-day sign-carrying useless. A vote on the matter will now have to wait until (surprise!) after the November elections.

At the end of the day, it was the protesters who stole the show. The pro-amendment, anti-gay marriage contingent had mostly uniform, pre-printed, green signs that said, "Let the people vote," although there were some more creative/offensive/not-really-germane-to-the-issue signs. One guy had a huge balloon that said, "Jesus is Lord," there was the requisite "Adam and Steve" punnery, and a huge banner that read, "NO SPECIAL RIGHTS FOR SODOMITES." (We were tempted to point out to the holder of this last sign that under a March ruling by the SJC, gay people from out-of-state can only get married here if they intend to move to Massachusetts or if their home jurisdiction allows gay marriage, so people from Sodom, which was in modern-day Jordan, couldn't get married here anyway. We decided to let that slide.)

Among the pro-gay marriage camp, home-made signs predominated, our favorite of which is shown above. Like the "Sodomites" and "Adam and Steve" signs, it doesn't really prove much. Romney's great-grandfather, after all, could have owned five slaves under the right circumstances, but that hardly proves that Bostonist should be entitled to one. Still, in spite of ourselves, we like public digs at Romney. The only pro-gay marriage sign we saw that matched the straightforward, logical appeal of "Let the people vote" was the one pictured below.