Having been rejected, the amendment is positively dead. The process would have to start all over again. The anti-same-sex marriage advocates withdrew their support from the bill (probably when they realized that it wasn't gonna survive, after many legislators that had voted in its favor had lost re-election last year,) hoping to get an amendment added to the constitution in 2008 by putting it directly to the voters.
"Gay marriage has begun, and life has not changed for the citizens of the commonwealth, with the exception of those who can now marry," said state Sen. Brian Lees, a Republican who had been a co-sponsor of the amendment. "This amendment which was an appropriate measure or compromise a year ago, is no longer, I feel, a compromise today."Without his support, the measure failed by a wide margin: 157-39.
The first same-sex weddings took place on May 17, 2004, after the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of equality for all citizens. Since then, more than 6,100 couples have married.
I hope the next step is for the legislature to get rid of that ridiculous, one-hundred-years-old law that only allows a marriage to take place if the couple's home state would recognize their marriage. As such, no gay couple not actually residing in Massachusetts can legally get married there, since gay marriage isn't legal anywhere else in the US.
That law, which was designed to prevent an interracial couple from getting married in Massachusetts and then demanding their marriage be recognized in a southern state that didn't allow for it, is the one Republican Governor (and presidential candidate-hopeful) Mitt Romney has invoked to block gay couples living anywhere in the country from travelling to his state, get married, and go back home to demand their marriage be recognized by their state, not to mention the federal goverment.
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