Tikkabik

For Massachusetts, a chance and a choice:

"... the distinction between [civil law] and ecclesiastical law is as important as the necessary distinction between church and state.

"...It is to the civil rights of the citizens of Massachusetts that the Supreme Judicial Court responded in the Goodridge case, and this was no attack on the church, nor on religion. It was recognition that the social custom restricting marriage to heterosexuals, a custom long sanctioned by church and society, was no longer to be regarded as consistent with the rights of citizens under the constitution."

I agree with Peter J. Gomes, the author of this article, a Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University (and an American Baptist minister to boot). Gomes, however, draws a very clear distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage.

It's a division that many people on the opposite side of the Mass. SJC's ruling are fundamentally incapable of understanding or accepting -- including George W. Shrub. To them, marriage is a sacrament, and the state's acknowledgement of it is simply a formality.

To many of those who oppose it, gay marriage is an abomination, just as half a century ago (as Gomes points out, a man of color himself), miscegenation -- or blacks and whites intermarrying -- was considered by many a religious affrontery that the courts had no business invalidating laws against.

This will take much time to resolve. It's not a matter of passing legislation, it's a matter of social engineering. And it's an incredibly polarizing issue that goes straight to the core of what we as a society identify as a family. My only hope is that we can all see some common sense and common ground in the SJC's ruling, but maybe I'm too optimistic about the open-mindness of my fellow citizens of this Commonwealth, and the legislators that we have ultimately endowed with our collective voices.