MassResistance petitioners spotted at Burlington Mall

MassResistance, the anti-gay group based out of Waltham, has until Oct. 15 to collect 33,297 signatures to try to overturn the legislature's repeal of the 1913 law, but in the months since they have begun collecting signatures Bay Windows had received no reports of sightings of petition gatherers out collecting signatures until this week, when a tip was received from a Quincy man who said he encountered three people gathering signatures for the 1913 law petition at the Burlington Mall in Burlington the afternoon of Oct. 4. A spokesman for Simon Malls, which owns the Burlington Mall, confirmed that volunteers for MassResistance were collecting signatures at the mall that day.

The law that MassResistance is trying to reinstate was originally passed in 1913, and it voided the marriages of any couple from out of state married in Massachusetts who could not be legally married in their home state. The law had been unenforced for decades until 2004, when then-Gov. Mitt Romney instructed clerks to enforce the law to prevent out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. The Legislature passed a bill to repeal the 1913 law in July, and Gov. Deval Patrick signed it into law that same month. The MassResistance petition would place a question on the 2010 ballot allowing voters to undo the repeal.

Jim, the Quincy man who reported the signature-gathering to Bay Windows, said the petitioners were standing in front of a table set up by the escalator leading to the mall food court, and he said they convinced several people in the few minutes he was watching to stop and sign the petition. Behind the table were the same green "Let The People Vote" signs brandished by opponents of marriage equality during the past debates on same-sex marriage on Beacon Hill.

Jim, who asked that his last name be withheld because he got into a verbal altercation with one of the petition gatherers and did not want them to learn his identity, said he approached one of the petitioners to find out whether they were collecting signatures for the 1913 law petition, and the man he spoke with told him they were doing so.

"The guy was telling me, he kind of quickly went off of, we can't stop marriage now, but we want to prevent people from other states coming to Massachusetts to take advantage of our laws," said Jim. He said he told the man off and walked away.

In a statement to Bay Windows, Rick Tonzi, general manager of the Burlington Mall, said the mall was required by law to allow them to collect signatures at the mall.

"Burlington Mall is bound by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to allow access to any group that is registered with the Commonwealth to petition for signatures for a ballot question on our property. Neither the mall nor Simon takes any position on issues or matters of this nature," Tonzi stated.

MassResistance faces an uphill battle to collect the required number of signatures. Massachusetts Family Institute, the state's most powerful conservative Christian group and an ardent opponent of marriage equality, declined to participate in the petition effort, arguing that many out-of-state couples would marry before 2010 and that the legislature could easily pass another repeal bill in 2011.