Marriage ruling favors NY gay couples

newsday ^ | 5-16-2007 | JULIET CHUNG

[bedolido]

Same-sex couples from New York whose marriages in Massachusetts faced a legal challenge there have valid marriages in that state, a Massachusetts court found last week, meaning their marriages are presumably legal in New York as well, lawyers say.

The court's judgment affects what lawyers say is at least dozens of New Yorkers who married in Massachusetts between May 2004, when Massachusetts began marrying same-sex couples, and July 2006.

[traditional1]

[diverteach]

And so, the slippery slope just got a fresh lube job.

[GoLightly]

I wonder about Federal tax status with these newly minted oddities. I’d think that Defense of Marriage would prevent them from filing “joint married” with the Feds.

[John Semmens]

NY Governor Says Abortion and Gay Marriage Keys to Revitalize State

Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer has proposed legislation that would eliminate gender from the legal definition of marriage and make denying a marriage license to homosexual couples illegal. He has also pledged to strengthen the state’s abortion laws, “to ensure that New Yorkers’ access to abortion will not be infringed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent errant decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion procedures.”

Spitzer cited the anticipated fiscal benefits of these measures as a strong ancillary rationale for the legislation. “Aside from the fact that sodomy and abortion are among the ‘unalienable rights’ guaranteed by our nation’s Constitution, there are significant economic benefits to our state from this legislation,” Spitzer asserted. “Homosexuals tend to have above-average incomes. Attracting more of them to New York will help boost state tax-yields. In addition, the absence of children in same-sex marriages and the reduction in birth rates due to more freely available abortions will lessen fiscal pressures on our public schools.”

read more...

http://www.azconservative.org/Column_Archives.htm

[jude24]

The argument was that, at the time the NY couples received their (legal) Massachusetts marriages, NY had not yet acted to reject out-of-state gay marriages.

On a technical legal basis, this ruling has some merit - which is why it was so troubling that Massachusetts started performing gay marriages. Full faith and credit became implicated until other states said otherwise.

[b4its2late]

Liberals are possessed.

[Torpedogirl]

It’s all eye-wash and means nothing. They will get no more benefits now than they had with a civil partnership. They’re trying to pump it up as a victory, but it’s meaningless.

[bvw]

Marriage is a fundamental term of law of ancient and established history. No legislature can change, legitimately, such terms.

Should they also redefine death, or life, or what a man is? They -- the Massachusetts Legislature and Courts -- are in the same sad territory Justice Tanney strode into with Dredd Scott, when he claimed negros are not men.

marriage n. the joining of a male and female in matrimony by a person qualified by law to perform the ceremony (a minister, priest, judge, justice of the peace or some similar official), after having obtained a valid marriage license (which requires a blood test for venereal disease in about a third of the states and a waiting period from one to five days in several).

Law.com