Gay Marriage Ruling Stirs Lobbying Furor in Massachusetts

[rodbarnett]

BOSTON (AP) - Grandparents and children have been transformed into lobbyists. Parishioners are getting political advice during church services. Lawmakers have been so bombarded with e-mail that some have shut down their computer servers to catch up.
Fierce lobbying for and against gay marriage is under way in Massachusetts, where the nation's first legally sanctioned same-sex weddings could take place as early as this spring because of a groundbreaking ruling from the state's highest court.

The court has given legislators little or no way to prevent it from happening come May.

Instead, the lobbying is focusing ever more closely on next week's constitutional convention, where lawmakers will consider an amendment that would effectively overturn the ruling and ban gay marriage if ratified by the voters in 2006.

The debate has put this famously liberal state at the very center of one of the

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