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CHRIS JOHNSON
Friday, June 06, 2008
The California secretary of state confirmed Monday that proponents of a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage have collected enough signatures for the measure to appear on the ballot in November.
The announcement ensures that California voters will be able to weigh in on the state Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling permitting same-sex marriage.
Proponents of the measure needed to submit more than 1.1 million signatures to qualify for the ballot and the California secretary of state certified that a sufficient number of the gathered signatures were valid.
If voters approve the amendment, it would place in legal jeopardy any same-sex marriage licenses obtained in California after June 17, when California is slated to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
Ron Prentice, chair of the ProtectMarriage.com coalition sponsoring the amendment, said passing the initiative is “the only way for the people to override the four Supreme Court judges who want to re-define marriage for our entire society.”
Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, said beating the amendment is “going to take everything we have as individuals and as a community.” He encouraged same-sex marriage supporters to donate money to campaigns geared toward defeating the amendment and for gay Americans to talk about “how hurtful this amendment is” to allies.
Despite the possibility of an amendment invalidating same-sex marriage in California, a local couple is still planning to make the trek to the West Coast to take advantage of their newly acquired right to marry there.
D.C. residents Stephen Gorman, a retired emergency medical responder, and Richard Cytowic, a retired physician, originally planned to marry in Vancover, Canada this summer, but after the California high court decided in favor of same-sex marriage, the couple changed plans and decided to marry in California instead. California, unlike Massachusetts, has no residency requirement for marriage, so gay couples from across the country are able to marry in the state.
Gorman said the couple changed their plans because getting a marriage license in the United States is important to them.
“Since it’s an American document, it’s a whole lot better than a Canadian one,” he said. “When we return home, I will frame the license, treasure it, show it off and then add it to our collection of legal documents.”
Gorman acknowledged that the passage of the amendment could bring his marriage license into legal question, but he said he wanted to tie the knot anyway because even if the amendment were passed, he would still have “a pretty piece of paper” representing his commitment to Cytowic.
The possibility of an amendment invalidating his marriage is not “sufficient cause to miss this golden opportunity, especially given the fact that the governor of California himself has put out the welcome mat,” Gorman said.
The couple intends to get married in a small ceremony at a library in Apple Valley, Calif., in San Bernadino County.
Gorman said out-of-state couples getting married in California would “give a lot of energy and impetus” to having same-sex marriages recognized elsewhere.
The California ruling prompted Gov. David Paterson of New York late last month to instruct state agencies to recognize the marriages of gay couples that wed outside the state. New York agencies have until the end of June to work out the logistics.
Gorman said he is hoping the District of Columbia will issue a similar order enabling the District to recognize same-sex marriages enacted in California.
At a news conference May 30, Paterson emphasized that he issued the directive so that he could follow existing state law, which requires New York to recognize common law marriages from elsewhere. Not issuing the directive would leave the state open to lawsuits and the treasury open to damages, he said. It would also discriminate against couples moving to New York from other jurisdictions, he said.
“We have been respecting these common law marriages for many, many years,” Paterson said. “We as a state would be liable if we did not take this action.”
Paterson said if lawmakers are angry with him and accusing of him circumventing the legislative process for taking this action, the lawmakers “should actually go into the legislature and work on something.”
The New York Assembly passed a same-sex marriage rights bill last year but the bill is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate because leaders have bottled it in committee.
Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, praised Paterson for his decision, arguing it keeps New York in line with existing law.
“He’s not making any new decision, he is saying there won’t be a gay exception to the way the state has traditionally operated,” Wolfson said.
Paterson’s directive “will make a real powerful difference both for lives of couples and in helping people understand why ending exclusion for marriage is the right thing,” Wolfson said.
But one gay New Yorker and advocate for same-sex marriage is not heading to California even though his marriage there would be recognized by his home state. Dan Pinello, a City University of New York government professor, has been fighting for the right to marry in New York with his partner of 13 years, Lee Nissensohn.
On April 28, the two went to Oyster Bay Town Hall to request a marriage license, only to be refused by officials. For remaining on the premises after closing time, the Nassau County Police charged the couple with trespassing.
Pinello applauded Paterson for recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages and called him “an unequivocal hero” for the gay community, but said he is still demanding for the right to obtain a marriage license for himself and his partner in his home state.
“All of our straight neighbors are married in New York state and we want to marry in New York state as well,” he said. “All of our family and friends, whom we would invite to a wedding, are local — they’re here in New York. Why should we be asked to require them to travel to California or Canada or somewhere else when we ought to be able to marry here at home?”
Pinello noted that Paterson’s action has no impact on how private employers grant health insurance benefits to same-sex couples or how the law of inheritance applies or how parenting rights work.
“Those are beyond the capacity of the chief executive to control,” he said.
Pinello argued that the governor’s action and the failure of the legislature to ratify marriage has the effect of telling New York gay couples to spend their money on marriages away from New York when that money could be contributing to the state economy.
“All of the people who are wedding planners here in New York state, who run event halls, who cater weddings — all of those various people whose livelihoods depend on the wedding industry should be really very upset,” he said.
Businesses associated with marriage on the West Coast “are going to be making a hell of a lot of money — hand over fist — and the ones back in New York state are going to be getting zilch.”
But while Pinello is calling on New York businesses to be up in arms, the situation is apparently of no concern to the Business Council of New York State, an organization that works toward a healthier business climate in New York.
“It’s not an issue that we’ve looked at all,” said Michael Moran, spokesperson for the Business Council.
Pinello said governors of other states may be compelled to issue directives similar to Paterson’s, but only where the chief executives feel as strongly as Paterson do on the issue and where they have the political leeway to take such action.
“I don’t know how many people that represents, but my hunch is there aren’t many,” he said.
In fact, instead of reacting to accommodate the decision of the California Supreme Court, the attorneys general of 10 states banded together to ask the justices to issue a stay of their decision. The court ruled this week that it would not stay the decisions until November as Alliance Defense Fund had requested.
The attorneys general, led by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff (R), argued that gay couples from their states could marry in California, return home and then sue for the right for their marriages to be recognized, causing a flood of civil lawsuits.
In a letter delivered May 29, Shurtleff argued that absent a stay of mandate, the number of lawsuits that states will face “will certainlybe very large indeed.”
Attorneys general representing Michigan, New Hampshire, Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota signed on with Shurtleff in his letter.
Some conservative groups are upset over New York Gov. David Paterson's order recognizing out-of-state gay marriages. One group filed suit this week to block implementation of the directive. (Photo by Mike Groll/AP) |
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Even Paterson is facing a lawsuit in response to his decision to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based conservative Christian group, announced May 30 that it planned to sue the governor to block his directive.
Shannon Prince Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who argued the marriage case before the Supreme Court, said the request of attorneys general from other states should be of no concern to the California high court.
“The fact that some other states may discriminate against same-sex couples is not a valid reason for California to do so,” she said. “We are confident the Court will stand by its decision, and we look forward to celebrating marriages of loving committed lesbian and gay couples in California very soon.”
Pinello called the request from attorneys general “foolish” and predicted that the California justices would not care about how their ruling would affect other states.
“The California Supreme Court has determined that under its state constitution there is a legal mandated right for same-sex couples to marry there,” he said. “What other states’ attorneys general think about that is irrelevant.”
Pinello noted that the attorneys general were all Republicans and speculated that they took this action for political gain.
Wolfson called the request from the attorneys general an example of “breathtaking hypocrisy.” He said right-wing groups set up marriage restrictions in their states to protect how these states wanted to handle marriage. Now these states want to tell California how it should handle marriage based on their own restrictions.
“The same voices are turning around saying to California because we discriminate here … you now should now discriminate against your own people and you should have to do what we do,” he said.
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