Civil disobedience

The Supreme Judicial Court has ruled unanimously that the Massachusetts Legislature has an obligation to vote on all matters placed before it during a Constitutional Convention and failing to take that action violates the lawmakers' oath of office.

Let's deal with three issues quickly. Over at Media Nation, Dan Kennedy has raised a proper question: how does the presiding officer deal with a valid motion to recess?

Based on my admitted non-lawyer reading of the decision, every Legislature since the creation of Article 48 has violated the state Constitution because, to the best of my knowledge, items have been pending on the calendar when every Constitutional Convention expires.

Finally, what would the SJC have done if lawmakers had simply placed the question at the bottom of the calendar and never taken it up? That action also falls within the Legislature's rules. If those rules violate the Constitution, as the SJC seems to suggest, what is the remedy?

So, on to the ruling itself. The SJC made crystal clear it's belief that lawmakers who fail to vote on the question will have to answer to a higher authority, the voters:

Today's discussion and holding on the meaning of the duty lays any doubt to rest. The members of the General Court are the people's elected representatives, and each one of them has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Those members who now seek to avoid their lawful obligations, by a vote to recess without a roll call vote by yeas and nays on the merits of the initiative amendment (or by other procedural vote of similar consequence), ultimately will have to answer to the people who elected them.

For legislators voting their conscience in refusing to allow a final vote the response should be "bring it on." Because they can make a compelling case they are rejecting an effort that can clearly be labeled "tyranny of the minority."

First, let's deal with the argument that 170,000 people signed petitions seeking a ballot test. That's about three times the minimum of 65,825 registered voters but still a sliver of the 4.1 million people signed up to vote, roughly 4 percent. There have also been some serious questions raised about the legitimacy of the signatures collected by an organization that collected $1.50 each in this act of "citizen participation."

Then we have a requirement that 25 percent of the Legislature present and voting in two successive sessions approve the initiative before voters pass judgment. The low thresholds were designed to encourage voter participation, but as is clearly the case here, those thresholds can be used by ideologues (left and right) to manipulate the system.

Legislators voting their conscience and refusing to place on the ballot a question clearly designed to strip a group of people of the rights granted to them by the very same SJC are therefore practicing a well-respected action known as civil disobedience.

It's a tactic used honorably by people through the history of this Republic to oppose legally-sanctioned slavery, the refusal to grant women the right to vote and to assure equal rights denied to African Americans in the South during the 1950s and 1960s. It was also used to protest the previous unjust war waged by the United States.

What's different in this case is the effort being made to use the law to strip existing rights. That's why the sides are reversed and elected officials are making a stand -- apparently against the law -- to protect a higher principle.

They should be applauded for their courage to stand up to bullying and intimidation from a small special interest group seeking to impose its own religious viewpoint on the rest of us. The voters of Massachusetts should not have to make a decision about what is right or wrong -- we've elected people to do that. This is one of those rare and courageous times where they have done the right thing -- despite the abuse heaped upon them.