The Legislature met in joint session as a constitutional convention on February 11, and after six hours of debate rejected two amendments, one proposed by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and the other by Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. Both banned same-sex marriage, one made civil unions possible and the other established civil unions. Finneran commented: "We are as divided as the nation on this. We are doing the best we can. We are human beings. We struggle. Sometimes we come up short." The convention met again the next day and defeated an amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman and disavowed any position on civil unions on a 103-94 vote that showed divisions in each party and Catholic legislators evenly divided. Ronald Crews of the Massachusetts Family Institute blamed Finneran's misreading of his own caucus for the failure of his own proposed language, a defeat in the convention's opening moments from which Crews found it impossible to recover.