E-Mail This Article to a Friend Devil in the details Gay-marriage foes win a quiet State House victory. Also, Ron Crews bids farewell. BY ADAM REILLY

It doesn’t have a catchy name: Massachusetts Senate Bill No. 2158. And its purpose is hardly sexy: adding transparency and rigor to the state’s initiative-and-referendum (I&R) process. But this wonkish piece of legislation could determine the course of the gay-marriage debate. As a first step in a process that could culminate in a 2008 ballot question, gay-marriage opponents have just under three months to gather 65,825 signatures supporting a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage without creating civil unions — and if Senate Bill No. 2158 dies an untimely death, their job will be a whole lot easier.

The odd thing is, two weeks ago, the bill seemed like a sure thing. In a July 16 Boston Globe article, Senator Ed Augustus, who co-chairs the legislature’s Joint Committee on Election Laws, hinted that the Senate would approve it within a week. But after Augustus’s committee moved the bill with a favorable recommendation, the Senate chose not to bring it to a vote before breaking for the summer. All of which means that it could be months before Senate No. 2158 becomes law, if it ever does.

Why the sudden reversal of fortune? Put simply, too many people found too much of the legislation too objectionable. Senate No. 2158 would make several key changes to the I&R process — which, for better or worse, allows the electorate to take government into its own hands. For example, all signature gatherers would be forced to attest, under penalty of perjury, that every signature they obtained was gathered in their presence, something known as the "jurat" requirement. The secretary of state’s office would provide electronic lists of every single signature obtained for every single I&R petition. And anyone seeking to change the law through I&R, whatever their cause (banning greyhound racing, creating publicly financed elections, stopping gay marriage), would be barred from paying signature gatherers on a per-signature basis.

The bill would also mandate public identification of major financial contributors to any I&R campaign. And it would explicitly ban the kind of bait-and-switch that occurred a few years ago, when gay-marriage opponents pretended they were circulating petitions against horse slaughtering to help get extra signatures.

Most good-government advocates would agree that the last two restrictions make good sense. The others are more dubious, however — and in retrospect, they may have been deal-breakers. Implement the first, and it would basically become illegal to leave petitions out in public spaces like cafés and bookstores. This, in turn, would make it much harder to get the requisite number of signatures — especially for genuine grassroots groups relying on volunteers, rather than on paid professionals. The second would have invited aggressive lobbying by opponents of any I&R measure, and could have made potential supporters of certain I&R proposals change their minds. Provision number three, meanwhile, might well have been an unconstitutional abridgement of political speech.

As a result, even some individuals who sympathized with the bill’s intent concluded that it amounted to legislative overreach. "What is the greater good?" asks Common Cause-Massachusetts executive director Pam Wilmot, whose organization backs some parts of the bill but opposes others. "Is the greater good getting more people involved in democracy, or is the greater good preventing a few more bad apples from breaking the law? If the sole goal is to stop fraud, all sorts of bad things can happen. You have to keep your eyes on the larger prize." These concerns gave rise to a classic strange-bedfellows coalition, with Common Cause joining Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin and conservative groups such as the Massachusetts Family Institute and Citizens for Limited Taxation, in opposing the legislation.

According to Josh Friedes, advocacy director at the Freedom To Marry Coalition of Massachusetts, the bill was aimed at preventing fraud in the I&R process, not at hindering the latest push by gay-marriage foes. "I don’t think that the bill, as drafted, would have had a dramatic impact on whether or not the anti-gay-marriage amendment would move forward," Friedes argues. Still, one source close to the process says the bill "was being driven pretty much 100 percent by [pro-gay-marriage group] MassEquality."

The inability of the bill’s proponents to build a broader coalition allowed the Massachusetts Family Institute, along with other gay-marriage foes, to frame the legislation as an undemocratic power grab by pro-gay-marriage forces. And once this happened, the bill became a political liability for the Senate as a whole and for Senate president Robert Travaglini in particular. "They’ve been working really hard to brush up their image as fair and progressive and doing the people’s bidding," one State House observer says of the Travaglini-led Senate. "Then, here, it looks like they’re changing the rules as quick as they can, before the ballot-initiative process starts, to make it harder. So it looks like they’re really manipulating the process." Given recent political history — in recent years, the legislature has overruled popular votes to cut the income tax and publicly fund state elections — this was probably something Travaglini and his leadership team wanted to avoid.

It’s still possible that Senate No. 2158 will make a comeback when the Senate begins formal deliberations after Labor Day. If it does, and if the Senate and House act quickly, it could become law sometime this fall. Earlier this week, Augustus told the Phoenix he’d be open to compromising on the more controversial parts of the bill — for example, by eliminating the jurat requirement for volunteers, or by creating a database that prevents fraud while keeping the identities of petition-signers private.

The goal, Augustus insists, is to limit the ability of wealthy individuals and out-of-state advocacy groups to mess with Massachusetts law, not to cripple genuine grassroots civic activism. "We know there’s going to be a major ballot initiative coming up [on gay marriage], and groups from around the country will be here, financially and otherwise, to push their agenda," he says. "And our procedures here are going to receive national scrutiny. It seemed important to me to tighten them up in a way that makes sure the voters of Massachusetts are protected."

Keep an eye on this one. It may be an arcane bit of legislative esoterica, but it has the potential to transform state government — and the direction of the gay-marriage fight, for one, hangs in the balance.

RON, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

As the skirmish over Senate No. 2158 unfolded, one name was notably absent: Ron Crews, the former head of the Massachusetts Family Institute, failed 2004 congressional candidate, and all-around headline hound.

Turns out that Crews — an Evangelical Presbyterian minister who moved to Massachusetts from Georgia in 2000, and had been one of the state’s loudest voices against gay marriage ever since — has quietly left town. A few weeks back, Crews, who is a chaplain in the Army Reserves, reported to Fort Campbell, Kentucky (home of the 101st Airborne, a/k/a the "Screaming Eagles"), to serve as an installation chaplain.

Crews declined to discuss his departure from Massachusetts with the Phoenix — probably a wise move, given his new status as a federal employee. But Lieutenant Colonel Ed Loomis, the public-affairs officer for the 101st Airborne, had this to say about Crews: "We rely very heavily on chaplains to provide support to people at very stressful times, and he couldn’t be a more welcome addition to this military installation."

So how will Crews be remembered? Earlier this week, Josh Friedes of Freedom To Marry offered a surprisingly moderate postscript to his old adversary’s brief Bay State career. "There’s an old saying from Fiddler on the Roof — ‘May the Lord bless him, and keep him far away from us,’" Friedes said. "That’s basically how I feel about him. He was a man who was driven by fear, by fear of difference, and he made life very unpleasant for gay and lesbian people in Massachusetts.

"I think he was very misguided," Friedes continued. "But I do believe that he was sincere.... I think Crews had the grudging respect of a lot of people, actually, because he was willing to engage in conversation and explain his positions and talk to a wider variety of people on the radical right. I enjoyed, generally speaking, a cordial relationship with him. Which surprised me, given how much I detested his politics."

Best of luck in Kentucky, Chaplain Crews. And here’s hoping you leave your anti-gay agenda behind while ministering to the men and women of the 101st Airborne.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com