On Monday, the wedding bells are due to start sounding in
Massachusetts but not everyone will be in a celebratory mood. May
17 is the fateful day when, at the behest of the Supreme Judicial
Court, same-sex marriage will become a legal reality.
This does not end the debate over what has become the
commonwealth’s most contentious social issue since the forced
busing debacle of the 1970s. After the 2004 elections, the
legislature will have to vote again on the recently approved
constitutional amendment that would roll back gay marriage and
replace it with civil unions. If Beacon Hill says “I do,” the
question will be placed on the ballot in 2006 for the voters to
decide.
But even this possibly temporary interlude of same-sex nuptials
has occasioned a great deal of wrangling and legal preparation. The
legal incidents of marriage permeate so many existing arrangements
and are buried in so many codes and clauses that untangling
everything to include same-sex couples is a Herculean task,
especially when faced with the persistent resistance of a
substantial percentage (perhaps even a majority) of Massachusetts
residents.
GOV. MITT ROMNEY has done everything in his power to leave the high
court’s Goodridge ruling weeping at the altar. When the
passage of an amendment against gay marriage was jeopardized by 22
Republicans in the state House of Representatives who refused to
vote for any amendment that allowed civil unions, Romney managed to
sway 15 of them to support the compromise version as the only game
in town.
After the amendment passed, he tried to persuade the
commonwealth’s highest court to issue a stay of its ruling until it
could be voted up or down by the electorate. Attorney General
Thomas Reilly, a Democrat and potential gubernatorial rival,
refused to make that case for him on the grounds that it was a lost
cause. Undaunted, Romney asked the legislature to give him the
power to appoint a special counsel to ask for a stay on the
Goodridge ruling.
When that proved to be a nonstarter, the governor decided that
the next best thing was to try and prevent the Bay State from
becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage. His administration dusted
off a 1913 statute that declared that any marriage of someone who
could not be legally married in their home state would be null and
void. The governor’s office instructed the local clerks who issue
marriage licenses to demand proof of residence from same-sex
applicants.
Some clerks argued that this would be discriminatory since they
have never asked heterosexuals to prove that they met the residency
requirement. Liberal local officials threatened to revolt. Boston
Mayor Thomas Menino told the Boston Globe, “There is a
good chance I might defy the governor, but we’re still looking at
all our options. It’s about civil rights. It’s about uniting
people. It’s about showing that we don’t discriminate in the city
of Boston.”
Romney softened his stance on how aggressive clerks needed to be
at enforcing residency requirements and the city of Boston has
since announced it will comply with the governor’s guidelines. But
Beantown’s compliance did not come soon enough to avert jockeying
among the commonwealth’s cities and towns to see which could be the
most accommodating of gay marriage.
Boston will have 20 city employees on hand at City Hall wearing
“welcome” badges ready to take questions from same-sex marriage
applicants. “It’s the law,” Menino insists. “Let’s do it right,
let’s do it with respect.” Cambridge, the home of Harvard
University, plans to get a jump on other gay-friendly communities
by beginning to issue marriage licenses to gay couples at the
stroke of midnight.
Officials in heavily gay and lesbian Northampton did not see a
midnight gay-marriage marathon as being necessary. “The point here
is that we’re treating people equally,” Northampton Mayor Mary
Clare Higgins reasoned. “We’re opening the same time we always
do.”
Another community with a large gay population, Provincetown on
Cape Cod, will also be opening its doors to marriage applicants at
its normal time Monday. But unlike Boston, Cambridge and
Northampton, Provincetown officials do plan on defying the governor
by marrying out-of-state gay couples. They will be joined by
Worcester, which is the state’s second-largest city, and
Somerville.
BY DOING SO, these cities are raising concerns that same-sex
marriage in Massachusetts will lead to the redefinition of
matrimony nationwide, despite widespread public disagreement. This
has encouraged 11th hour attempts to get the federal courts put a
halt to Goodridge before Monday. Matthew Staver, president
and general counsel of the Florida-based social conservative
organization Liberty Counsel, called the Bay State supremes’
decision “a constitutional train wreck” as his group filed a last
minute lawsuit to derail it. These efforts have been unsuccessful
at this writing.
The grappling is not limited to the public sector. Private
companies are also scurrying to make sure that their benefits plans
conform to the changing legal climate. A former employer of mine
announced that after a grace period, it was canceling its spousal
equivalent domestic partnership benefits for gay Massachusetts
employees. Gay and lesbian workers who want to continue coverage
for their partners will have to get hitched just like everybody
else. This will no doubt inconvenience and frustrate a few logical
supporters of the new state policy, but at least at this company
you can score one for Jonathan Rauch and other proponents of the
“conservative case” for gay marriage.
Leaving aside what the impact of changing marriage will be on
the culture, it is likely that after May 17 new practical glitches
and conflicts will emerge that no one had anticipated. Things will
probably still need to be worked out for months — all without any
guarantee that gay marriage will even continue to be permitted
after November 2006.
Battling local clerks, posturing politicians, competing
lawsuits, constitutional conventions, and a possible statewide vote
all inject several cc’s of unpredictably into the situation, but
one thing is certain: Bay Staters are in for one long marital
squabble.
