Blue Mass Group

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MassEquality’s 2008 Equality Agenda

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MassEquality Community Forums:

Greater Lowell Community Forum

TONIGHT!

6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Greater Boston Community Forum

TUESDAY

6:30 – 8:30 pm

Brockton Community Forum

 February 7

6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Western Mass Community Forum

February 12

6:30pm – 8:00pm

North Shore Community Forum

February 18

6:30 pm – 8:00pm

Metrowest Community Forum

February 19

6:30pm — 8:00pm

Southcoast Community Forum

February 24

6:00pm — 8:00pm

Greater Worcester Community Forum

February 26

6:30 — 8:00pm

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  1. at each forum, so why not warm up your response here:  why isn’t the repeal of the 1913 laws on the list?  how much does Big Dem pressure have to do with your answer?

    • The law has no effect on other states, they can choose whether to recognize or not recognize same-sex marriages, or change them to civil unions like new hampshire and the other civil union states do.  And married same-sex couples that claimed residence here will still move to other states and claim to be married there.  So all this law does is prevent us from getting the tourism dollars that a few extra weddings would generate.

      • it send the message that massachusetts agrees to kowtow to the bigotry of other states.  how noble and right to take direction from the likes of kansas and alabama on who can marry in the bay state.

            • I think couples that can’t marry in their home state should be allowed to go to another state that will marry them and be allowed to get married, like NH does, and the other state should then recognize the marriage if it has been consummated.

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              p>Virginia tried the Lovings on a crime of going out of state to get an illegal marriage.  Originally they were arrested for cohabitating, the sheriff saying that their D.C. marriage license wasn’t good here, but the charge was changed, because they recognized that a marriage had indeed occurred.  Could they have annulled the DC marriage?  Perhaps, but they didn’t.

                • I said it was a no-brainer.  All the act does is lessen the number people bringing ssm to other states.  It, like DOMA, is part of the slow gradual state by state frog in the water strategy.  

                • That seemed like i was disagreeing, and originally i was thinking that NH shouldn’t let 13 yo’s marry if they come from out of state to do that, but I changed my mind, even though it is weird that 13 and 14 year olds can marry there.

        • they still have to contend with how to treat couples that got married in Massachusetts, whether they had been Mass residents or not.  Granted, there would be immediate cases of people hopping on a plane for a weekend and returning to challenge their state’s laws and claiming to be married, whereas the law might slow that stream down a little bit.  But it’s only a question of time that people would just move there anyway, or come here for a month or whatever it takes to establish residency.  So the law makes no difference in terms of how they deal with same-sex marriages, it just gives them a chance to draw things out longer, to absorb some of the shock.

          • A state must honor another state’s agreements, according to the Constitution. It’ll take some time, but DOMA will be thrown out eventually. The SCOTUS has skirted around the issue, but once we get rid of 1913, they’ll have a much more difficult time doing so. While a state doesn’t have to perform same-sex marriages, eventually they’re going to have to honor them if they were performed in one of the other 49 states in the USA.

            • The SCOTUS has skirted around the issue, but once we get rid of 1913, they’ll have a much more difficult time doing so.

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              p>But you didn’t get my point, 1913 has nothing to do with these other state’s problems, except in numbers and immediacy.  The question of how they will deal with the full faith and credit of another state’s purported marriage is still there, all 1913 does is slow down the tourism business and delay the returning marriages that might cause consternation in the rest of the country.

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              p>There are probably couples that married in MA trying to assert their marriage standing in states all over the country right now, but the “Garden State Equality”-type groups are telling them to wait till later, just like there are telling Civil Unioned couples not to press their cases of discrimination, for fear that their Civil Unions will prove perfectly legally triumphant in court.  It’s not the right time to spring all these cases on Nebraska.

              • I misunderstood you, then.

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                p>Personally, I think it’s the perfect time to spring it on Nebraska, but the point is moot, because that’s not the direction most GLBT organizations are going.

            • A state is not required to do so if doing so would be in conflict with that state’s public policy.  See Pacific Employers v.Industrial Accident Comm. 306 US 439 (1939).

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              p>No state will be required to recognize a Massachusetts SSM via the full faith and credit clause, because each of the other 49 states could argue that allowing SSM is contrary to that state’s public policy.

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              p>Absent a federal constitutional amendment, the only way to force another state to recognize SSM will be through that states’ legislature and courts, just as was done in Massachusetts.

              • The Full Faith and Credit clause is pretty clear

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                Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

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                p>Now, that doesn’t mean we have a courageous supreme court that would uphold the constitution at the moment, but give it a Democratic President, with a larger majority and perhaps one or two changes made to the court – as well as further momentum in society (including, but not limited to, the removal of DOMA) and we’ll see it happen.

                • was annulling a Massachusetts couple’s marriage?  Would Massachusetts have to give full faith and credit to that act and so consider the marriage annulled?  They do with divorce, when the divorce takes place in, say, California, right?

                • You can get married in Massachusetts and divorced in California. Many people actually choose to get divorced in a different state than they were married in because divorce law is different. For example, I believe in California they have no-fault divorces where a person who cheated, for example, wouldn’t be penalized for causing the divorce. Other states take stuff like that into consideration.  

                • Could Kansas just annul same-sex marriages as soon as they get back, and would Massachusetts then give FF&C to that anullment?

                • Like those twins that got married in England accidentally, the government annulled their marriage immediately.  It happens quite often, they wouldn’t have had to keep that marriage on the books and legal just because some state clerk allowed it to happen.

                • Enough of the thread-derailment. Your hypothetical isn’t going to happen – and I doubt would be legal. It also flies in the face of the Full Faith and Credit act.

                • States can annul a marriage by declaring it void, wherever the marriage was originally established.

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                  p>

                  The general rule with respect to marriages is that if the marriage is valid where contracted, it is valid everywhere.  However there are exceptions to that rule: (1) incestuous or polygamous marriages, or (2) marriages prohibited because they violate public policy.

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                  p>That’s from “Legally Wed: Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution By Mark Philip Strasser”.  I haven’t read more than that…

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                  p>Didn’t mean to hijack, just wanted to point out that 1913 doesn’t make a difference to the question of other states recognizing our state’s or any state’s marriages.  It comes down to the decision of the judge or whoever deciding whether X marriage is valid or not, and the laws of the state are supposed to rule that decision.  The reason marriage is generally valid everywhere once contracted is because once a couple has consummated the marriage and been behaving faithfully as wed, states agree that they are married because there might be children on the way and they are bound to each other now, even if their ages or degree of consanguity might make them ineligble to wed in their new state, like if they are first cousins moving to a new home in NH after having married in Massachusetts.  NH just says, ok, they’re married now, because they got married in some crazy state that let them.

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                  p>So some rules are bent due to respect for people’s culture and customs, because the marriage has happened, it’s consummated.  But some aren’t, like for siblings or a harem of 10 year old brides, even if the marriage has happened, a state might say “sorry, we can’t let this continue here, we declare that it not only isn’t but never was a valid marriage.”

                • Since when does the “pretty clear” meaning of a Constitution have anything to do with the legal impact of the Constitution?  If it did, Massachusetts would not have gay marriage, unless the Legislature chose to authorize it.

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                  p>I even pointed you the the USSC decision that sets up the “public policy exception” to the full faith and credit clause.  

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                  p>Full Faith and Credit just doesn’t mean what you want it to mean.  Even if it did, Congress can empower states to ignore the clause in certain circumstances, and it has done so in this area.

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                  p>If Alabama doesn’t want to recognize your marriage, you aren’t going to be able to force it to do so.

    • I was at the Greater Lowell forum tonight mentioned in the post.  The 1913 law was actually a prominent feature of the discussion and MassEquality is working for repeal.

      • did they indicate that they were actively working for a repeal in the current session, or is it just somewhere down on the wish list?

        • and I really trust that MassEquality will work on 1913. If it’s not off the books within a year or two, I’ll be surprised… and MassEquality will have a lot of angry constituents.

            • There is a fair argument to be made that this statute is odious in its origin and in the manner in which it is now applied to SSM, regardless of whether this has a braod impact on some national agenda, or on tourism in P-town.

    • So glad to see so much interest! I should have been more clear in my initial posting, though.

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      p>MassEquality is working on three main priorities.

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      p>1) Protecting & promoting marriage equality in Massachusetts (Click here for more information on that work)

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      p>2) Promoting full equality for the LGBT community in Massachusetts, which includes promoting the Equality Agenda in the State House (More info)

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      p>3) Supporting other New England States in winning marriage equality
      (More info)

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      p>Advocating for the repeal of the 1913 law is very much a part of priority #1 – protecting & promoting marriage equality.

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      p>As, I should mention, is re-electing our pro-equality legislators and electing new pro-equality candidates in the upcoming elections.

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