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N.Y. Gays May Soon Tie the Knot in Mass.
21,000 gay couples from the Empire State are predicted to marry in Massachusetts in the next three years, bringing economic benefits with them.

By Joelle L. Quartini
Thursday, July 24, 2008

For New York’s same-sex couples, a legal marriage in the United States could soon be less than 215 miles away.

The Massachusetts Senate voted July 15 to repeal a 1913 law that stops out-of-state couples from marrying in the state. The law bars couples from obtaining a Massachusetts marriage license if it the marriage would be illegal in their home state.

New York is one of only three states, including New Mexico and Rhode Island, that has no law condoning or opposing same-sex marriage. In fact, when Massachusetts became the first state in 2004 to allow gay  marriage, New Yorkers did get hitched there. That changed in July 2006, when the New York State high court ruled against marriage equality. Because of that ruling, Massachusetts’ 1913 law suddenly applied to New Yorkers.

The Massachusetts House of Representatives must still pass the bill, and the governor must sign it before the law can be repealed. Advocates expect both will happen soon.
There have been only minor reservations in the House because some who are worried about upcoming elections, said Marc Solomon, campaign director for MassEquality, the state’s equal marriage advocate.

“We’ve proven very clearly in two election cycles that this is not an electoral issue,” Solomon said. “It’s an issue that the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts feel very comfortable with.”

Once the Massachusetts House votes to repeal the 1913 law, the bill would need a signature from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, whose 18-year-old daughter came out publicly as a lesbian last month.

“Gov. Patrick has made it very clear that he would be delighted to have this bill reach his desk and if it were to, he would sign it,” said Sen. Diane Wilkerson (D-Mass), the lead champion of the legislation.

“We wanted to be clear that anyone who comes to Massachusetts to visit should be treated just as the people who live here,” Wilkerson said.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass), one of two openly gay members of Congress, (Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin is the other) said there is a commitment in the House to pass the legislation before the session ends on July 31.

Frank said the issue of same-sex marriage has become pretty boring in the state, and heterosexual residents are unconcerned.

The only resistance has come from out-of-state gay-marriage opponents, who fear the open marriage laws will affect their states.

Wilkerson said she has received nearly 700 e-mails from residents of other states, begging her not to proceed with the legislation. Regardless of whether a couple comes to Massachusetts to get married though, it is still the couples’ home state’s decision whether or not to recognize the union.

Though New York State doesn’t perform same-sex marriages, state agendices and many companies to recognize and honor them. On May 14, New York Gov. David Paterson directed all state agencies to recognize valid out-of-state same-sex marriages, including the New York couples who have traveled to Canada to marry since it was legalized in 2003.
Despite the proximity of Canada, many gay New Yorkers said they wanted to get hitched in the United States. In June, California became the new hotbed for gay nuptials when that state’s high court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage equality. California has no residency requirment,  nor does it include a clause similar to the Massachusetts 1913 law.

“California was a wake-up call to us that we still had one piece of discriminatory language on the books,” Solomon said.

California has also promoted the economic benefits of opening marriage up to gay couples—money that Massachusetts had been missing out on because of the 1913 law.
The Massachusetts Office of Housing and Economic Development estimates that more than 51,000 gay couples live in New York State, and 21,000 of them would get married in Massachusetts within three years if they could.

An additional 11,000 couples would come from surrounding states, creating 330 new jobs and a $111 million economic boost for the state.

Massachusetts enacted the law in 1913 so that interracial out-of-state couples who could not marry in their own states could not marry in Massachusetts, where interracial marriage has been legal since 1843.

Massachusetts’ marriage laws touch close to home for Cathy Marino-Thomas, co-executive director of Marriage Equality, New York, which works for civil marriage for same-sex couples. She married her wife in Massachusetts just after the state legalized same-sex marriage in 2004—something she couldn’t do after July 2006.

“This is all part of the inequity of having the Federal Defense of Marriage Act in place,” Marino-Thomas said. “Laws like these are very unconstitutional; It messes with peoples lives.”

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into affect, barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages and allowing states to ignore those performed elsewhere

A Marriage Equality bill has passed the New York State Assemblyand is now being held in the Senate, waiting for a vote.

“The time has come to step up and keep same-sex couples out of harm’s way,” said David Buckel, Marriage Project Director at Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest civil rights legal organization.  

Most couples, Buckel said, go to Canada, where there is “no cloud over the source,” and they feel the most safe when they get home. Marriages performed in California could still be questioned if voters there pass a Nov. 4 referendum to outlaw same-sex marriage in the state.

With Massachusetts on one side, Canada on another and neighbors New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut all providing civil unions, Buckel said “It’s truly absurd that New York would be surrounded by all these states and another nation, but there is no statewide status in New York, of all places.”

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