Sadly, in Massachusetts, we’re just aren’t there yet with full equality. As Chris Mason reminded us all recently, our state’s hate crime laws do not include statutes for gender identity. Therefore, the people who allegedly committed a hate crime in Lowell earlier this month may not be charged with a hate crime: they were using anti-gay epithets, the victim self-identifies as a transgendered woman. The law is fuzzy for this non-lawyer, so a hate crime may still be applicable, but it will certainly complicate something that should be very simple.
At Beacon Hill, there are two other extremely important fixes this state must make to protect marriage equality. Both, coincidentally, have to do with 1913. Everyone from MassEquality to Susan Ryan-Vollmar at Bay Windows has told me ‘we need to wait on reversing the 1913 law that bans out of state marriages, until after we get rid of the amendment.’ I disagreed – I thought it would be the perfect vehicle to drive momentum on the issue after January’s initial loss – but mostly bit my tongue.
Well, now we won. It’s time to collect on 1913. More than 75% of legislators agree that marriage equality must be protected, yet it’s still a separate-but-equal institution until the day any consenting adult can marry the person they love in Massachusetts, whether they’re from here or not… and that’s just not the case with 1913 around. Surely, 50%+1 of both houses would agree and can change it by the end of the summer? Heck, just think of the added tourism we could get from glbt visitors around the country wanting to tie the not?
1913 was a very, very bad year… not only do we have to suffer the racist and homophobic 1913 law, but the constitution was amended in 1913 as well. What was the amendment? It added a new provision that allowed people to gather a certain set of signatures and push ballot amendments onto the legislature that only required 25% of legislative support over two consecutive years to reach voters for a final say in changing the constitution. It was the amendment that got everyone worried this year – John Adams, in his wisdom, certainly didn’t include that POS in his heyday.
If we don’t repeal that amendment, 94 years too late, we’ll be exactly where we were yesterday three years from now: fighting for our rights. And if we aren’t, who knows what future amendment will find its way onto the Constituion, even if it’s racist or homophobic policy? Who doesn’t think 25% of state legislators couldn’t agree that English should be our official language? How about policies directed toward undocumented Americans? I’d rather not see that, so it’s time MassEquality and the like start arguing for constitutional changes that will actually protect rights instead of threaten them. Both 1913s must be repealed.
If we do those three things, Massachusetts will come a long way toward full equality. However, there’s only so much progress we can make on Beacon Hill, even if it is the Hub of the Universe: the rest of the challenges we face comes from our federal government. First and foremost, DOMA, the law that prevents our marriages from being recognized in most other states and prevents gay partners from receiving federal benefits, has to go. It’s time Massachusetts Marriages be Federally-Recognized Marriages and marriage equality be just that: equal in every way, shape or form.
There are two routes to take in destroying that vile piece of homophobic legislation – and I don’t know which will be easier. For starters, because of the Full Faith and Credit clause in the US Constitution, DOMA is almost certainly unconstitutional. However, until 1913 is repealed, it will be hard to challenge DOMA in the court. Furthermore, with the judicial system swarmed by uber conservatives, it will be hard to get them to listen. The second method is just as difficult: repealing it in the legislative arena. Not only is it an uphill battle, but it faces an almost certain veto by President Bush or any Republican who wins the next election. Heck, if the Democratic landscape doesn’t change and Hillary Clinton wins, can she be counted on signing a repeal to DOMA when her husband enacted the law to begin with – and she doesn’t support marriage equality either?
DOMA must be stripped. It has to go. The trees do make sounds – and so do our marriages; I heard the bliss loud and clear on the steps of the State House last Thursday, then on national blogs and CNN. It’s the only way to ever make marriage equality exist for everyone in this country. State Constitutions have stripped the rights to marry in 32 states, with another 17 banning it through basic law. To undo that damage, it would take decades of difficult, grassroots work. However, it may only take a few years to kill DOMA. Once DOMA is dead, at the very least people can get married in Massachusetts and have that marriage exist anywhere in this country – with all the rights and responsibilities that come along with it. Once the barrier is broken, too, surely more states will follow the Bay State’s lead.
There are also many other national acts that must take place. Some of them will probably get done sooner rather than later, like protections against workplace discrimination and an expanded national hate crime law. However, now that Marty Meehan is soon-to-be gone, we need some champion of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I’d like to think Jamie Eldridge would become that guy if elected, he’s already promised he would, but we need someone to be. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is especially bad because there are already tens of thousands of gay people serving in the military; everyone says we need to honor the troops, yet those tens of thousands are told they have no honor if they come out with pride.
In Massachusetts, we need to do what we can here – because we can have a far greater say in what happens. It’s our Commonwealth, after all. Our efforts can have a direct, immediate impact to everyone who lives in the Commonwealth’s borders. However, we also need to show how great marriage equality is – how the sky is not falling – because we have an entire country to convince on civil rights and we need as many allies as we can get. We need to make all the other changes this state can make, so we lead with authority. It will take a lot of hard work and many national coalitions to get DOMA and DADT removed. We have a part to play in that, but the best way we can help is to actively show how great equality is for everyone. We took a giant leap in that effort last Thursday, by ensuring equality for years to come. Now, it’s time to work toward finishing the job. We can do it. We can ordain and establish equality for all in the United States of America.
We need the UAFA to get passed as well and it irks me that Hillary and Obama aren’t on board for that with absolutely circuitous and tortured reasoning.
Strategically, I think you’re wrong to target DOMA. It’s a bad law, sure, but it’s stable for now. I doubt it’s unconstitutional – full faith and credit is a “benefit of the doubt” sort of rule, it doesn’t explicitly allow one state’s laws to have precedence over other laws. Furthermore, most states now have their own DOMAs so it doesn’t matter much whether the federal DOMA is repealed. However, if you attack the federal DOMA, you raise much more ire than necessary because people who don’t consider gay marriage a priority as long as it’s in some other state could see that as an attack on their state by others who live far away. It could turn people into activists on the other side – and for very little value.
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What we need to do now is work state by state. The position that marriage is a state issue is much more widely supported around the country than gay marriage, and it gives many Republicans an easier way out: they can’t support repealing DOMA without pissing off a lot of their voter base, but they can say “this is a state matter” – as some of them did when they opposed the federal constitutional amendment.
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We’re in the midst of a generational change, and the best way to accelerate this change is simply to have more gay marriages, and more married same sex couples out there for people to meet and get to know and read about and be related to and so on. Massachusetts has been a huge catalyst and I think we’ve moved national public opinion by about 10%-15% in a few years. Now, we need to help other states legalize gay marriage.
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Advantages: – Although repealing federal DOMA is unlikely to actually grant real people more real rights anywhere, legalizing gay marriage in a new state will. – There are a number of states where it is politically possible even now, with good organization – and we’ve got people in MA who can help with that. – States that recognize gay marriage can cross-recognize each others’ without waiting for the federal government. If NJ legalizes gay marriage, a married same sex couple from MA would have hospital visitation rights when in NJ, for example.
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Yes, I’ve got NJ specifically in mind, though some of the New England states that have civil unions could also do it in the next few years if there are well-organized campaigns there. Like with the RGGI, the northeast could lead the nation, gradually.
There is another side to DOMA that makes it’s repeal, or at least it’s amendment, vital sooner rather than later. That is, access to federal laws, benefits and responsibilities by legally married s-s couples. DOMA has 2 parts: 1) states don’t have ro recognize each other’s s-s marriages, and 2) the feds don’t have to recognize a state’s s-s marriages. You are talking about part 1, and I can see how attacking part 1 might cause problems right now. But attacking part 2 has the express support of Hillary Clinton and other Dem candidates. She and the national Dems should be held accountable for making s-s couples full citizens with regard to federal rights, responsibilities and benefits.
You can read federal DOMA, and keep up with state-level DOMAs here. Here is the text (in bold) of federal DOMA. As is obvious, it is a 2-part law, and so DOMA discussions should be taking both sections into account.
Please note that in my comment above, I got the two parts mixed up. Cos was referring to Part 2, the states rights part. I was referring to Part 1, the federal recognition part.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be targetting DOMA in the way that I’m targetting DOMA if it weren’t so darned offensive. It single handedly makes any marriage I’d get into a second class one. I don’t care if it could ignite their base, it’ll ignite ours too. By the time they push they’re movement, we’ll have 100,000 marriages.
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The fact is that, because of DOMA, even if SSM were legal in all 50 states and we overturned all 32 constitutional bans and 17 state law bans, SSM would still be second-class marriage. Why? DOMA! DOMA strips us of any federal benefits. If one partner in the marriage worked for the federal government and died, heaven forbid, the other partner wouldn’t receive that person’s pension. Do you know how that could cripple a family? It extends into filing taxes, visitation rights… etc. etc. etc. etc. It needs to go, I don’t care if people are uncomfortable with it.
…from a tactical standpoint, given the make-up of the federal judiciary, attacking DOMA now, and or using the 14th amendment to get anti-SSM laws or state constitutional provisions, would be disastrous to the future of SSM. Not only would the federal judiciary rule against you, it would also spur a demand for a federal anti-ssm marriage amendment.
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If you don’t care about either of those, then, by all means. Some of us do.
It’s going to take years to defeat DOMA. I have no doubts about that. However, I’d rather it take years to defeat it than decades – and if we start doing the underground work now, we can hopefully remove it from the law books if we elect more democrats next term to both the house and senate… as well as a democratic President, who would be foolish to veto it.
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We need to start a real grassroots campaign to convince America and get people behind getting rid of DOMA. We need to turn it into an issue. That’s what I’m really trying to get done here. I don’t think a lot of America either cares or knows about DOMA – and we need to change that.
it seems to me that you and raj agree in practical terms. raj is saying a SCOTUS approach is foolish at this point (so does GLAD, btw). You are calling in your comment above for a legislative approach. I personally am for a legislative approach too at this point. As stated above, some POTUS major candidates are actually for weakening DOMA right now. That’s a major breakthrough, and all candidates should therefore be held to that standard and expectation. There is no excuse for a POTUS not to work hard to have DOMA amended so that all civil marriages are recognized by the federal government. It is a problem that Alabama doesn’t recognize SSMs, but it is a bigger problem that the federal gov’t doesn’t, IMHO. Truth in advertising: I say this as half of a binational couple.
… and as several of us have noted, the legislative approach starts with the states. Attacking DOMA directly right now is, IMO, a lot of effort for no likely gain. But legalizing gay marriage in a few more states lays groundwork to make it possible to attack DOMA later.
i believe we can pursue marriage state by state, and simultaneously pressure prez candidates to weaken the doma by campaigning to remove the part of it denying federal recognition of ssm’s enacted by the state(s).
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btw, isn’t the united states breaking some treaty or other by not recognizing marriages enacted in canada, etc.? this is a shameful breach in international protocol, and should be highlighted.
One, you are quite correct in your first paragraph that there is nothing stopping the two efforts from going on in parallel. It’s not an “either/or” situation.
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Two, you are probably referring to Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are several problems with relying on that. One, it is not a treaty. Two, it would not require country A to recognize any and all marriages conducted in country B. For example, it would not require the US to recognize polygamous marriages conducted in Saudi Arabia, while a Saudi is visiting the US.
…DOMA should be held unconstitutional, it would probably be a tactical error at the present time to bring a federal lawsuit to try to have it held unconstitutional, given the conservatism of the current federal judiciary. Gay activists–at least the rational ones–at the national level know that, and that’s probably why they haven’t rushed to overturn it. Once the Supreme Court has ruled, it is very difficult to get them to overrule an earlier ruling.
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On the 1913 law, I recognize Ryan’s argument, but I am not particularly exercised against the law. One, if people want to take advantage of Massachusetts’s marriage laws, they are more than welcome to move to Massachusetts. Two, and more important, the 1913 law effectively inhibits people from coming to Massachusetts to evade their home states’ marriage limitations, and then going back to their home states and suing to have their Massachusetts marriage recognized. If that were to happen, I suspect that we would see a renewed push for the federal anti-marriage amendment.
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The problem will come if and when a same-sex couple, Massachusetts residents and married in Massachusetts, thereafter moves to another state that does not recognize either same-sex marriage or CUs, but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.
with all due respect, raj, the “but the might cross state lines!” arguement is a straw man. it’s not like MA is the only place s-s couples can get married. Many continue to go to Canada and other countries, and some have already taken part in legal challenges to their home state’s s-s marriage prohibitions. The WA challenge, decided just a few months ago, included such couples as plaintiffs. The cat is out of the bag. The only reason to retain the 1913 law is to limit the number of married s-s couples living in other states. But it has not an cannot ever prevent this phenomenon.
…the Washington State Supreme Court decided the case on state constitutional grounds (although analogies were drawn to decisions under similar provisions in the Federal Constitution’s 14th amendment).
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And I haven’t seen any indication that the case has been appealed to the US Supreme Court (it was decided last July), and cert granted–but you might know otherwise. If no appeal was taken, or the US SupCt denied cert, the case is dead.
to the SCOTUS. i believe the reason is as stated widely elsewhere: the current membership of the SCOTUS is unlikely to rule in favor of anything gay-positive.
here is the WA supreme court decision. The case was a consolidation of teh Anderson case and the Castle case. In Castle, some of the plaintiffs had been legally married in Canada, and some quasi-legally in Portland, OR (marriages later voided by the OR supreme beings)
…I found the opinions on Findlaw.com
and getting married in MASS are far from the same thing from the standpoint of those who are saying things like passing a trans-inclusive hate crimes bill, ENDA, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and getting more SSM in other states should be more of a priority than tackling DOMA (which will fall in time, believe me; many are saying now is not that time, is all…)
I think it’s a perfectly fine system.
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You’ve got to: * Get a large number of signatures, which shows significant buy in. (fn 1) * Get that 25% threshold in two consecutive sessions. This allows the people an elective session [if not more than one, since the sig campaign may take years] to re-elect or un-elect legislators who won’t be on their “right” side of this particular issue. * Get a majority of voters at the ballot box.
It’s a process that end-arounds much of the legislator’s power. This is fantastic, because sometimes the lege is just plain wrong on some issues, and can be expected to be biased toward their own power and benefits, two things that the people may feel differently about.
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It’s true — sometimes the people with petitions are ugly bigots. But, ugly bigots are Americans too, and a well functioning democracy allows them to make their statement and then tells them to STFU via the democratic process. So, while that process gave the fair-minded folks a scare, it really did work. I have faith that it will continue to work.
fn 1. Should the number be made higher? I’d entertain that idea. Should the sigs be more carefully verified? I’d certainly entertain that notion.
I’m not talking about the 1913 law prohibiting out-of-staters from marrying in MA. That’s just dumb.
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I’m talking about the constitution amendment process.
I would feel much more ambivalent about leaving the petition initiative system as is IF removal of civil rights was precluded from the system. Then, yes, it is an interesting instrument for civic action. But if the stripping of a minority’s civil rights are not taken off the table, the hurdles must be raised, or better yet the system ditched completely. Minorities should not have to be forever on the defensive. As is clear from every other state (except AZ & MA) that had one of these anti-gay amendments, the minority virtually always looses.
We had no recourse to unelect the 65 or so who initially voted for the amendment. They did it well after the general election had taken place. Maybe, if we did have a chance, you’d have a point. As it stands, you don’t.
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Remember, we’re talking about Higher Law here – Constitutional Law. Nationally, that requires a super majority to pass. At the very least, in Massachusetts, it should require two years of majority passage in the legislature before it moves on to a majority vote from the people. Personally, I think it should also include a super majority of the citizenry’s support. Like I said, we’re talking about Higher Law here; the Constitution should be damned hard, nearly impossible, to change.
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If we were to do it that way, with at least 50%+1 to pass in the leg, I’d also agree on making it so that the amendments had to be voted on. Thus, if legislative “shenanigans” were used in an attempt to avoid the vote, it would automatically go on the ballot or something. I think that would be a fair compromise – even the “ugly bigots,” as you called them, would get their vote – and so would the good guys, like the one’s who wanted Health Care as a right.
I’d favor revising the current system to require that the ConCons take place in the first year of the leg, not the second. Why? It gives a full year to get together an opposition campaign — primary or general election — to run against the legislators who voted yay or nay in the first ConCon before the second consecutive ConCon takes place.
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So, you’re right — the current ConCon system allows it to be gamed so that the reps aren’t accountable to the voters before the second ConCon takes place. That is a big hole in the current system, and one I’d support fixing. But, I wouldn’t fix it by changing the 25% threshold. I’d fix it by changing the ConCon dates, and I might think about raising the voters threshold from 50% to something higher, although 67% is really high. Maybe 60%? Food for thought.
Now is the time to broaden the discussion to start sparking discussions about how to expand important rights to ALL families, not just married ones. Read http://www.beyondmar… for a good recap of this line of thinking.
Believe me, I write on things like Health Care a lot. We need a far range of legislative success in the Federal Government, which will hopefully come if we elect a dem to office and have another huge legislative victory in 08. Of course, I don’t expect Obama or Clinton to lead many of these changes… so we’re going to need to elect a lot of progressives to office to start the process. While I don’t think Hillary or Barrack can be counted on to start the process, I really don’t think they’ll veto them either – and if they do, there will be a very, very angry Democratic/progressive base.
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However, I was writing about glbt rights specifically. A lot of people, especially who aren’t glbt themselves, may think we won the battle, that’s it, it’s over. Well, it isn’t – and I wanted to politely remind them of that. There are other things, beyond marriage, we need to address – and I talked a lot about them: gender identity discrimination, DADT, workplace discrimination and hate crimes. Of course, I spent a lot of time on DOMA, but because that’s the ultimate thing we need to overturn. If we win on DOMA, we can a) win on anything and b) make marriage a right for everyone in this country instantaneously, and ignore the decades it will take to overturn nasty, homophobic state constitutional amendments – because Massachusetts Marriages (and, by then, hopefully equal marriages in other states as well) could then be transported anywhere in the country.
In keeping with “we’re not there yet”, here’s a fantastic NYT editorial on The Inadequacy of Civil Unions. I especially like the summation
word is that the assembley judiciary committee unanimously approved the marriage equality bill,and has sent it to the assembley floor. possible vote this afternoon, and it is expected to pass. the senate is another matter, with a large contingent undecided. but each positive step, like this one this morning, is a step in the right direction.
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You can do it New York!
Unfortuntely, the unanimity was only among Democrats on the committee, because it was a party-line vote. That seems to indicate that this will have tough times ahead in the Senate (for now).
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Nevertheless, good news indeed, and it appears CA and NY will be racing to be the second state with equal marriage sometime in the not so distant future.
read up on it here. As you said, Hoyapaul, the Senate is a bit of a problem at present, mainly in the form of majority leader Bruno. I’ve seen him attributed elsewhere as Bruno (R-*asshole) ;-). He is well known for not allowing pro-LGBT legislation to be voted on, even when (or maybe especially when) there is a majority in favor.
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Still, unlike CA, NY has great support in the person of Elliot Spitzer. They have work to do, but anything is still possible.
The organization working for marriage in NY is Empire State Pride Agenda. Please consider making a donation, or alerting your NY friends and family to the progress that could be made with their help.
My feeling is that repealing the ‘1913 law’ ASAP is penny wise and pound foolish. It will precipitate lawsuits in other states, will cause enough turmoil to create more and strengthen existing mini-DoMAs, will bring about a fight prematurely. And screw up the 2008 elections for gay-friendly candidates by maximizing the stakes.
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I feel the best thing to do is simply to not touch the ‘1913 law’ until after the 2008 elections. No use screwing things up for Democrats nationally if Republicans are committed to opposition to gay rights. Remember that we need a changed Supreme Court that enforces 14th Amendment rights and accepts need to extend those protections for a whole variety of reasons beyond gay rights.
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In the meantime there’s plenty enough to do in enough states where there is willingness to improve the lot of gay people. Toppling Republican control of the New York State Senate, which is the barrier to gay marriage legalization (and root of the bipartisanly corrupt and dysfunctional state of state government there), is a big one. Getting an upgrade to civil unions through in Maine. Progress in recognition of Massachusetts ssms in Rhode Island. The leverage this creates nationally will greatly help the push for repeal of DoMA and mini-DoMAs.
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Best to keep two political tracks going, one modest and bottom up and positive and always gaining, the other ambitious and intelligently opportunistic about tearing down major obstructions.
should be passing S918, which explicitly includes s-s couples in marriage statutes.
We know that there isn’t enough to get a constitutional amendment through. I’d go a little slow on this until we get their sense on things–it isn’t as though we need it now. Maybe if we wait until after the 2008 election, after things settle out among the electorate.
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If it get’s through the legislature, I’m sure that Patrick will sign it.
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BTW, this is the kind of measure that the SJC was demanding in its advisory opinion in 2004.
as far as i know. this is simply updating the MGL in accordance with the SJC’s decision. quite honestly i don’t know where the legislature stands on it, but i find it hard to believe that we couldn’t get a simple majority in both chambers. getting the MGL in line with the Goodridge decision would take away the conservative whining point about activist judges and extra-legal bla bla bla.
…it would be nice if the legislature were to get the Mass Gen Laws in conformance with the SJC’s decision in Goodridge, but as far as I can tell it is not a priority at this point. Heck, Alabama didn’t repeal its anti-miscegenation law, rendered invalid in 1967, until something like the late 1990s (and then only by a bare majority.
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Let sleeping dogs lie–at least for a while. We have other things to attend to. Like “gender identity,” maybe?
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BTW, we have the benefit of living in the districts of Sen. Creem and Rep. Pietsch, who seem to be pretty good on voting the right way on most civil liberties issues.
At some point people have to start doing what’s right because it’s right, not doing what’s wrong because it’s easy. 1913 isn’t right and we’ve waited a damn long time for it to be shelved. Now is the time. MassEquality said after the ConCOn – and I’m going to hold them to it.
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Two things –
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First, no one in Alabama is going to know that we repealed 1913. The fact that we defeated the amendment barely registered nationally, even though it should have been huge news. I somehow doubt they’re going to stop covering Paris Hilton for a single second because some obscure law in Massachusetts was overturned. Chances are, months after 1913 would be repealed, 95% of Alabama won’t have known the difference.
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Secondly, even if I’m wrong, I don’t really give a damn. Being weak has never helped the Democratic Party. It’s time for them to stand up and BE STRONG. We have a country to convince and that will never happen if we’re always running from glbt-issues. I donate time, money and sanity toward advancing progressive causes. By God, it’s time to cash in.
…I totally disagree with you that Massachusetts should be required to (validly) marry people who reside in other states who intend to return to their respective states, merely because MA state marriage laws are more liberal than those of their states of residence.
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I’ll propose to you another scenario, that doesn’t involve race or the sex of the couple. Suppose MA state law allowed persons below the age of majority (generally 18) to marry, but the home state doesn’t. Do you really believe that a marriage of two, say 16 year olds from a state whose age of marriage was 18, entered into in Massachusetts, in which the married couple did not intend to reside in Massachusetts should be considered valid in Massachusetts? Give me a break.
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As far as I’m concerned, the only issue regarding the 1913 law was that the Romney malAdministration piled on the city and town clerks the obligation to determine what the relevant laws were in other states in connection with the enforcement of the 1913 law. And it did so without providing any assistance to the clerks in determining what the laws in other states was. That was the problem, not the 1913 law.
We have to marry heterosexuals if they come. If I went to Maryland and wanted to get knocked up with a girl, they’d have no choice. Seriously, I don’t even think you can refuse to marry someone if you go the civic route to a marriage.
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The bottom line is that, in America, we have this handy little thing in our universal Constitution called the “Full Faith and Credit” clause. What does it mean? One state’s agreements must be recognized by another’s. You may not think that’s important, but imagine an America without that clause? We could be 50 seperate, little countries. Therefore, that clause exists. Therefore, if Bill and Susie get married in New Hampshire and then, five years later, Susie gets a better job offer in Kansas – they can move to Kansas and vwalla! Kansas instantly recognizes there marriage. Otherwise, they’d have to go through a lot of trouble to get it re-recognized. It’s pretty simple, even you can understand it.
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Now, let’s take this baby-step process one step further. If you would agree that marriage equality should exist – and I would hope so, seeing as how that’s the only way you’re going to get married as a gay person (unless you don’t mind living a lie) – it must exist universally. If Susie and Bill can move and have their marriages recognized, so should Bill and Ted, when Ted gets his job offer in Washington. It’s merely a matter of basic fairness.
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Lastly, who the hell is talking about under age kids? Neither you nor I are experts in how marrying under age works children works. So, why would I even get into that? It’s a completely different subject that has nothing to do with this. And I suppose we needed to invade Vietnam to stop all of South East Asia from going communist too?
What the 1913 law says is that, if a person who (a) is not a resident of Massachusetts, (b)comes to Massachusetts to marry, and (c) if the marriage would be void in his or her home state, and (c) if that person does not intend to remain in Massachusetts as a resident, the marriage is also void in Massachusetts.
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Your Bill and Susie New Hampshire example is not relevant if–as I infer–they are residents of NH when they marry (item (a)), or they came to NH to marry and intend to remain in NH as a resident (Item (c)). As I have indicated elsewhere here, the issue of whether a state will be required to recognize a valid same-sex marriage conducted in MA will be determined when a validly married same-sex couples moves to another state and sues to have it recognized. That is analogous to your “moved to Kansas” issue.
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Regarding your Lastly, who the hell is talking about under age kids? apparently you are unaware of the fact that some states allow persons as young as 16 to marry–and some allow persons as young as 14 to marry with their parents’ permission. Different states have different minimum degrees of consanguinity. Different states have different requirements. That was the point that you obviously missed.
I get precisely what 1913 does. You may not know this, but I’ve actually been writing about 1913 for a while now. See, I have this thing called a “blog” which is short for web log. Basically, I write about things that interest me. One of those things that interest me is GLBT rights in Massachusetts….
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/snark off
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Raj, anyone can come to Massachusetts – for a week, a day or an hour – to get married. Anyone, except for gay people, of course. There’s something inherently wrong with that. Maybe you don’t care, but you wouldn’t be the first stupid gay person but how you care about the situation matters about as much as how Cardinal O’Malley cares about the sodomites saying “I do.”
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Finally, I didn’t engage in your equally stupid 16-year-old argument (there’s a pun there) because of two reasons:
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1. It’s a slippery-slope argument and you’ve therefore already lost.
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2. Neither you nor I know jack shit about the legal implications involved. However, I’ll take a spin on the wheel to frame this in a way that you could understand: while a 16 year old may or may not be allowed to marry in Massachusetts, I bet – if it’s legal in Kansas – they could go to Kansas and get married. That marriage, interestly enough, would be recognized in Massachusetts, even if we wouldn’t have given them the license to begin with. It’s called the “Full Faith and Credit Clause.” Albiet, with the unconstitutional DOMA thrown into the mix, who knows? Hence the sentence that started this second point.
Bill and Susie are now music rock stars and high as a kite on a Rocking Tuesday. They’re pumped that their concert over at Tweeter went fantastic, so got married the next day. Then they moved back home. That’s legal.
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Bill and Ted are a pair of queer-old musicians doing a charity event in Boston. They’re from the West Coast, but love the city and wanted to get married there, at the birthplace of same-sex marriage equality and America. They’ve been together for 10 years.
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Oh, wait, they can’t.
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But Bill and Susie, man we need to see their 20 minute marriage.
I seriously don’t. I’ve been writing about it–from a legal and political standpoint–since the SJC’s Goodridge decision.
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Emote on the issue as you wish, but I disagree with you. As I have explained to you, whether or not you wish to respond to the arguments opposed to your position. And quite seriously, you haven’t responded. Go to law school, Maybe you’ll understand. I’m not going to give you a Constitutional Law course here.
I understand exactly what the 1913 law does. However, you’re advocating something backwards. Our law prevents people from being married here if their state does not allow it. Yet, you’re essentially saying ‘what about under age teens getting married in other states, then coming back here.’ Well, 1913 does not and cannot protect Massachusetts from Massachusetts teenagers going to wherever to get married there, even if we don’t allow that here. Only DOMA type laws do that – and I would question their constitutional validity, no matter how high-minded your anonymous self wants to get.
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Furthermore, it’s not the first time in this thread that I’ve made that comment and thus answered that point of your question. So, yes, I have responded. I hope I just made it clearer.
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Most importantly, what right do we have as the State of Massachusetts to decide how to interpret Connecticutt’s laws and Constitution? Or any state’s laws? I didn’t know states were in the business of deciding the laws of other states. If other states don’t want to recognize our laws, that’s their business, not our’s. Though, I would suggest to them that it violates the Full Faith and Credit clause.
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Finally, I advocate changing the law. I don’t need to take a Con Law class (though, I have) to tell me we can do that.
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Ultimately, you’re jumping through lots of loops to advocate in favor of 1913. However, as the State of Massachusetts, it is absolutely our right to undo that law. If other states have a problem with it, too bad. They can worry about themselves.
If you’re against the principle of people hopping state lines to duck local marriage restrictions, you’re first target should be Vegas. If you’re not willing to target Vegas for heteros, then you’re not serious about your principle, imo.