Same-sex couples from New Mexico are now eligible to marry in Massachusetts, state officials ruled this month, after determining that the Southwestern state does not explicitly ban gay marriage.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which oversees the state’s Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, issued the ruling after a gay rights group in Massachusetts asked the agency to clarify whether the state would authorize the marriage of gay couples from New Mexico.
Rhode Island, which also does not explicitly ban same-sex marriage, had been the only other state whose gay residents can marry legally in Massachusetts.
Neither state has agreed to recognize the marriages.
On July 18, Stanley E. Nyberg, the state’s registrar of Vital Records and Statistics, issued a notice to city and town clerks that a Supreme Judicial Court ruling last year does not prohibit gay couples from New Mexico from marrying in Massachusetts.
The court ruled that gay couples from other states could not marry in Massachusetts if their state explicitly banned same-sex marriage.
“Effective immediately, Intentions to Marry completed by same-sex couples from New Mexico who seek licenses to marry in Massachusetts may be accepted,” Nyberg wrote. “Under applicable Massachusetts law . . . New Mexico’s laws do not prohibit marriage between parties of the same gender.”
Our friends in New Mexico are benefitting from the same loophole that allowed the Mass. decision, way back when when the marriage code was established, no one DREAMED same sex couples would want to marry, therefore they did not deem it necessary to explicitly say “One man and One woman” in the law. Lots of other states did the same thing, and the Mass. decision a few years back left them scrambling to check their own laws and amend them.
KTF!…mrb
A note to all of those who say we don’t need a national constitutional amendment defining marriage.
So, these poor souls from RI & NM, go to MA to get *married*. Unless they permanently move to MA, there so-called *marriages* will not be recognized in their home states.
I suppose that the point to all this, the wider agenda of these folks, is to go back to RI or NM, claiming to legally married per MA law and then, take the local jurisdictions to court due to the rejection of the *marriage* as not conforming to RI or NM state law?
Oops.
My second line reading “there so-called” ought to be either:
“their so-called”, or, “these so-called”.
Sigh
This interpretation of Massachusetts law will probably result in more states amending their constitutions and statutes to explicitly preclude gay marriage.
The article reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the body of law called conflict of laws. The longstanding rule is that only the state of legal residence (“domicile”) can regulate domestic matters such as marriage and divorce. Just as MA cannot divorce NM residents, neither can it marry them, although marriage in MA pursuant to a NM license could be valid if the officiant meets NM’s requirements.
The real test will come when a bonafide MA gay married couple moves to NM and seeks to have their MA marriage recognized.
#8 raises the the body of law called conflict of laws. The longstanding rule is that only the state of legal residence (“domicile”) can regulate domestic matters such as marriage and divorce. and observes thtat The real test will come when a bonafide MA gay married couple moves to NM and seeks to have their MA marriage recognized.
I am curious to know how this doctrine might have been applied or not invoked in the Loving case. If I recall the circumstances of that situation, Mildred and Richard Loving were citizens of Virginia who being barred from marrying in their home state as an interracial couple crossed the line into the District of Columbia, which did not have a ban on interracial marriage. They returned to Virginia to reside together and were subject to penalty from Virginia authority. As a result they relocated to live in Washington, DC for a period of time before they sued the Commonwealth of Virginia, the suit that resulted in the Loving v. Virginia decision.
Faithful [#7]: Virginia made interracial marriage a crime. I would infer that prosecutors argued that the Lovings were still really Virginians at the time of their D.C. wedding.
Some interesting background on the Loving case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924
#8 Irenaeus provides some very interesting web links.
It seems from reading these, that, if I infer correctly, at that time and in that state, people were married before they had children, or to say it differently, children were born to married parents. Thus, their lineage could be ascertained from the lineage of the married couple.
And it seems from reading these web links, that in that time and place, when the parents were not married, the male partner of the sexual union that resulted in the child was well enough known to the mother that, in those rare cases, the children’s lineage could still be ascertained.
Without these particular assumptions regarding customs of sexual behavior, I can make no sense of it at all.
# 8 Ireaneus observes: I would infer that prosecutors argued that the Lovings were still really Virginians at the time of their D.C. wedding.
This was my supposition, as well. With that the case, we could make the analogue between a New Mexican couple going to Massachusetts and Virginians going to DC. My question was how the doctrine of conflict of laws that Bill Matz writes about in comment # 6 applies to either case.
Loving supports my analysis in #6 insofar as the Court recognized VA’s right to regulate domestic status issues, such as marriage, among its legal residents (domiciliaries). The problem was that VA’s rule was unconstitutional (but not its jurisdiction). The basis for jurisdiction may have been, as Irenaeus suggests, that the couple were still Virginians at the time of marriage, but it could have been that VA (re-) acquired jurisdiction when the couple returned to VA. I can’t recall. However, as noted above, out-of-state marriages would not be valid unless conducted IAW the laws of (one of) the parties’ state of legal residence. (N.B., a 24 stay in Reno or Vegas does not establish legal residence, even tho’ NV law allows the wedding to take place.)
“Same-sex Civil Unions” maybe(??) Same-sex Marriage never. Nuff said!