What would happen to the debate over gay marriage if an amendment to ban it were actually approved? If Massachusetts is any indication, the debate would continue. MPR's Tom Scheck spent last weekend in Boston talking to people about the issue there. Massachusetts is the only state where gay marriage is legal, and gay couples have been getting married for about two years. But as Scheck reports opponents of gay marriage are still trying to ban it:

The Massachusetts Family Institute garnered more then enough signatures to jump-start the next step. Workers at the office are busy stamping post cards to lobby lawmakers to let the people vote. Kris Mineau, the president of the organization, is confident that they can convince enough lawmakers to vote to put the measure on the ballot.

"This is the last opportunity in this commonwealth to resolve the issue once and for all," Mineau said. "I believe that it's paramount that the people vote because otherwise we'll never know what the real heart of the people is about this."

But Scheck also notes that supporters of gay marriage picked up seats in the Massachusetts Legislature in the last election.

Speaking of the gay marriage issue, the dispute over Sen. Dean Johnson's comments to agroup of pastors has become a running joke at the Capitol. MPR's Laura McCallum sent me this note:

At almost every committee hearing I've covered lately (or again yesterday on the floor, [Rep. Tom] Rukavina joked about it during the debate over the House budget resolution), one lawmaker will ask another one if he or she talked to any Supreme Court justices on the matter. I suspect the justices (or Johnson) don't see this as a laughing matter, but it always seems to draw a laugh.

Oh, those wacky lawmakers.

In the Senate Tax Committee, what seems like a slam dunk bill is getting a little more complicated. Brian Bakst from the Associated Press had the story:

The Senate Tax Committee plans to vote Friday on a proposal to give many married couples and some other middle-income people a tax break. But to pay for it, the plan would raise income taxes for wealthier Minnesotans. The bill is the work of committee chairman Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis. It puts the Senate on a collision course with the Republican-controlled House and GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Sen. Bill Belanger, the Tax Committee's lead Republican, warned Thursday of deadlock, preventing any tax relief. "I see this as starting down the same path as we did last year," he said. "For some people, compromise is not in their vocabulary."

Speaking of vocabularies, MPR's Dan Olson took a look at the constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot this fall. It deals with transportation, and there's already a good deal of confusion about just what the amendment actually says:

Voters will be asked to decide if 100 percent of the MVST revenue, about $558 million this year, should eventually go to transportation. Right now just under half goes to the general fund for other uses.

But that's not the ballot language lawmakers approved last session.

Their language puts the question to voters this way: "Do you approve amending the state constitution to allow no more than 60 percent of MVST revenue to go to roads and bridges and no less than 40 percent to transit."

Which just goes to show it's not only vocabulary, but syntax which is important. Try to remember that this weekend. Just don't talk to a Supreme Court justice beforehand to try to figure out what it all means.