July 2002 Sightings

Sen. Birmingham Agrees He Broke the Law

Sen. Birmingham agrees that he broke the law on Wednesday. ''Everybody recognizes a vote to adjourn was a vote up or down on [the amendment],'' he told the Globe.

Exactly.

He didn't not allow a vote on the Amendment because he knew he would lose. Therefore, he refused to allow the legislators to vote on the Amendment as they are required to do under the state Constitution.

Asked how he felt afterward, Birmingham told the Globe he felt ''very good about it.''

Birmingham Says That Was 'Democracy in Action'

''Today we saw democracy in action." Sen. Birmingham told the press many times on Wednesday. "They may not like it, but they lost two to one."

But they didn't lose a fair vote as the law requires. They lost a crooked vote and the Senator has acknowledged that he broke the law.

Many people are wondering what democracy he uses for his model, Cuba or North Korea?

Lacked the Votes to Defeat It Outright

Birmingham lacked the votes necessary to defeat the Amendment outright. Instead he conspired to adjourn the constitutional convention indefinitely, effectively blocking the question from appearing on the election ballot. His stooges voted 137-53 in his favor.

The Globe said the ballot question appeared to have the necessary support "and more." But no vote was ever taken on the question itself.

Arline Isaacson Had Tears in Her Eyes

Arline Isaacson wiped tears from her eyes as she told the Globe, "We are absolutely, deeply appreciative of Tom Birmingham's leadership on this issue." The board member of Massequality.org said, "It's great that so many legislators understood that we should never put equal rights on the ballot for the popular vote, and that the tyranny of the majority should not be allowed to take away the rights of the minority."

No one ever asked her who defined this as a "civil rights" issue, or what we should think about the civil rights of the 130,000 people who signed the petition last year.

She was not asked why she continues to live here if she believes that the other people who live here are in favor of "tyranny."

Cheryl Jacques Will Do Anything for 'Victory'

"I'll take a victory on this any way I can get it," Sen. Cheryl Jacques told the Globe. "I'm proud to have done anything possible to defeat this hate-filled, discriminatory measure."

Globe Calls for Vote on Marriage, As Predicted

The Boston Globe has called for a vote on marriage tomorrow, as MassNews revealed last Friday would be the case. "Senate President Thomas Birmingham should lay this proposal before the convention, as the state Constitution prescribes," the Globe said in an Editorial today.

MassNews also said last week that there would be nothing new in the Editorial about the merits of the proposal and there isn't. The Globe calls it "An Ugly Amendment," and says the legislators have "veto power" over such Constitutional Amendments under this process. They don't know or don't care that the Supreme Judicial Court has said exactly the opposite many times.

Close Vote on Marriage

The consensus on Beacon Hill is that it will be a close vote on the Protection of Marriage Amendment but the measure will obtain the necessary 50 votes if it does come to a vote.

Senate President Birmingham apparently realizes that and will attempt to defeat the measure by some procedural device, such as not ever calling for a vote even though the state Constitution requires him to do so. Or he may quickly call for a quorum, which requires 101 votes, and adjourn the Convention if there are not 101 legislators present.

"That is why we must keep letting the Senator know that thousands are watching his every move, and why we should all be at the State House tomorrow at noon so we can let our own Senator and Representative know how we feel," says Sarah McVay Pawlick, President of Mass. Citizens for Marriage.

Birmingham Getting Most Calls About Marriage

Sen. Tom Birmingham reports he's getting more phone calls for or against the Marriage Amendment than about the hundreds of matters left unresolved in the late budget, according to the State House News Service.

Many political observers wonder if the pounding he is taking on this issue from the many supporters of the Amendment is the reason he has "joined the ranks of second-tier candidates" for Governor, way behind Shannon O'Brien and Robert Reich and with the highest unfavorable ratings of anyone at 35%.

Globe Finally Understands that Schools Are Damaging Boys

The Boston Globe has finally discovered what MassNews has been saying for years: that boys are getting shortchanged in our schools.

The lead story on the front page of yesterday's Globe reported that "boys get referred [to special ed] because they tend to act out. … very often they don't necessarily have a disability at all. It's just that they're active." That quote from Mass. Education Comm. David Driscoll was the most important story in the whole world yesterday, according to the Globe.

The Globe didn't say that this happens because the women in charge of our schools just do not understand boys, as Prof. Christiana Hoff Sommers did in her famous book, The War Against Boys, and as MassNews did in its series about the feminists at Harvard's School of Education and at Wellesley College.

The July edition of MassNews has a major story about the major problems that Wellesley is causing across the nation with its heterophobia that is financed by the federal government.

Nor did the Globe wonder if the large amount of Ritalin that is used in this state to sedate boys is because of the extreme feminists who run our schools here.

They did quote more of Driscoll, "Young girls tend to be passive and underidentified, because they're compliant, and sometimes it hides a disability."

Globe Still Doesn't Understand Why Africans Die of AIDS

The Boston Globe has been writing a lot in the last few years about the "21 million dead" in "20 years" from the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

But it still doesn't tell the whole truth. We revisited this topic a year ago.

The Globe is again writing about the suffering among poor women in Africa. But it still hasn't reported what Ambassador Alan Keyes told a crowd at the State House in 2000, right after Fistgate.

Keyes revealed he had been briefed about AIDS by the World Health Organization over twenty years ago when he was Assistant Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan.

"They described the nature of AIDS and the virus and predicted the terrible things that would happen.

"At that time, this wasn't necessarily well known by everybody, but they knew what the problem would be and they also knew something else that was interesting. They knew that in certain parts of the world it would be contained, and in other parts of the world it had the potential to be so destructive that whole populations would be threatened.

"And you know what the difference was? It was a difference in sexual mores between one part of the world and another. In some parts of the world, rampant promiscuity was the philosophy and ideology confined to only certain kinds of sexual groups. But in places like Africa it was a philosophy spread throughout the entire population, heterosexual as well as homosexual, and they predicted then, that that difference of moral philosophy would, in fact, lead to an awesome difference in the death toll that would be faced because of this terrible scourge.

"When are we going to step back, my friends, and realize that they weren't just talking through their hats? They knew what they were talking about, and as they predicted, so it has occurred. We have before us the most clear example we can of what will happen if we allow the general breakdown of sexual morality and sexual responsibility that is encouraged by what this state is trying to do in its schools. And it will not be the birth of halcyon days of tolerance and naturalism in sexual activity. It appears that, instead, it will be the lengthening shadow of death for individuals to whom we owe not such a fate of death but our most compelling arguments of love."

However, there is an easy cure for this disease. It is the "a" word, but that word is not allowed in the Globe offices.