Romney to back gay-marriage ban in Massachusetts

BOSTON — Gov. Mitt Romney said Thursday he will support a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal.

The Legislature was already working on a proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage but also would allow Vermont-style civil unions. The new proposal drops the civil union language, meaning such unions would remain illegal in the state.

If the new proposal passes procedural hurdles, it could appear on the statewide ballot as soon as November 2008.

Romney said the original proposed amendment — narrowly passed last year by state lawmakers and awaiting a second round of voting later this year — is "muddied" because it includes both the gay marriage and civil union issues. He said voters should be able to decide on gay marriage with a "clean, straightforward, unambiguous amendment" that does not include civil unions.

Romney's announcement was immediately decried by supporters of gay marriage.

"It is really sad that (Romney) is playing politics with gay and lesbian families and their children, and that's all that is," said Mark Solomon, political director of MassEquality.

The new proposed amendment will take the form of a citizens' initiative. That means the state attorney general's office must sign off on the proposal language, supporters must collect 65,825 voters' signatures and one-quarter of lawmakers in the Legislature must vote twice to approve it. Only if it passes those hurdles would the state's voters have their say.

Massachusetts' highest court ruled in November 2003 that the state constitution guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. The nation's first state-sanctioned, same-sex weddings began taking place May 17, 2004.

In San Francisco, meanwhile — in one of the few lawsuits arguing the case for gay marriage in federal court — a judge ruled that a 1996 California law recognizing only unions between a man and a woman as valid does not violate the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Gary Taylor declined to rule, however, on whether a state ban on same-sex marriage runs afoul of the Constitution, saying the issue "is novel and of sufficient importance that the California courts ought to address it first."

A lawyer for the gay couple who brought the case said the men would appeal.