GAY-MARRIAGE VOTE SPARKS FIGHT IN MASS. RACES: From the Boston Globe

...Gay marriage is a central issue in about a half dozen races around Massachusetts, reprising the highly charged debates over morality and civil rights that echoed in the halls of the State House during the Constitutional Convention last spring. Both sides are hoping for an edge before the Legislature reconsiders a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and allow civil unions. The measure would have to be approved in the next session in order to place it before voters in November 2006.

Several of the races touched by the same-sex marriage debate are in metropolitan Boston, including the fight for Walsh's seat and the replay of a Democratic primary fight over a Somerville House seat lost by an incumbent who voted to ban gay marriage. Even state Senate President Robert E. Travaglini of East Boston, a supporter of civil unions for gays, faces a long-shot challenge from a candidate who opposes gay marriage and civil unions.

Activists on both sides of the debate have entered the fray as well. Gay marriage supporters, such as Mass Equality and the Human Rights Campaign, based in Washington, D.C., are mobilizing hundreds of supporters; the Human Rights Campaign has spent about $650,000 in Massachusetts over the last year. Gay-marriage opponents, such as the Archdiocese of Boston and its allies, have used the gay-marriage debate to pump up voter registration.

"The same-sex marriage debate is not over," said an editorial in the latest edition of the Pilot, the official newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. "A more pro-same-sex marriage Legislature could impede the constitutional amendment that would define marriage in this state as the union of one man and one woman."

Many lawmakers on both sides of the issue feared they would face a tough foe like Walsh when they voted in Constitutional Convention earlier this year. Such fears were overstated, though no one will know the fallout until election day. Four years ago in Vermont, 17 legislators who supported civil unions for gay couples lost their seats in fall elections.

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