Court is told of chaos on marriage
Foes ask SJC justice to delay gay weddings
Predicting legal chaos in Massachusetts if gay and lesbian couples marry starting May 17, same-sex marriage opponents asked a single justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court yesterday to delay allowing such marriages for 2 1/2 years, until after voters consider a constitutional ban in late 2006.
C.J. Doyle, the executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, said the court should postpone implementation of its landmark ruling until Massachusetts residents vote on a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage and establish civil unions.
"Legal chaos will be created by the issuance of same-sex `marriage' licenses before the issue goes to the citizens for a vote in 2006," Doyle said in an eight-page petition filed with the SJC yesterday. The court, he added, "has a duty to avoid this inevitable conflict and confusion by simply staying the entry of its judgment pending the outcome of the amendment process."
Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, decried the petition as a "desperate move and a publicity stunt."
"This is an end run around the constitutional process; it's an end run around the court decision," she said.
So far, the SJC has given opponents of gay marriage no wiggle room to prohibit such weddings, ruling in November that limiting marriage to heterosexuals violated the state constitution and declaring in February that civil unions would create second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians.
Doyle is hoping that one of the seven justices sitting alone will grant a stay on the narrower issue of whether granting same-sex marriage licenses should be delayed until voters decide the proposed referendum. Each month, one of the justices holds a single justice session to hear cases. This month, the justice is Roderick L. Ireland, who was one of the four who agreed last fall that it is unconstitutional to bar same-sex couples from the rights and benefits of civil marriage.
Doyle conceded that Ireland's vote in favor of same-sex marriages makes it doubtful he will grant a stay. "We have no rose-colored glasses here, but we believe it's certainly within the realm of possibility," Doyle said.
Ireland will ask GLAD and the state attorney general's office to file responses to the petition and then decide whether to consider the request, according to Joan Kenney, a spokeswoman for the court system. She had no timetable for when he might hear arguments.
Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly disagreed with the high court's ruling and recently rebuffed Governor Mitt Romney's request that he seek a stay, saying that the governor, an opponent of gay marriage, had not set forth valid legal reasons. A Reilly spokesman said yesterday that the attorney general had not seen the petition and had no comment. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School and author of a friend-of-the-court brief supporting gay marriage, dismissed Doyle's petition as a "completely pointless exercise."
He said Doyle was unlikely to meet the two fundamental requirements for securing a stay: First, that a constitutional ban will probably pass -- which he said only a soothsayer could predict -- and, second, that irreparable harm will result if the request for a stay is rebuffed.
Renee M. Landers, president of the Boston Bar Association and an associate professor at Suffolk University Law School, said she would be surprised if Ireland agreed to hear arguments in the petition. Even if Ireland had not voted with the majority, she said, single justices are usually loath to tamper with a decision of the full court. Landers, who supported the SJC decision endorsing same-sex marriages, also questioned whether Doyle had the legal standing to request the stay.
But one of Doyle's lawyers, Chester Darling of Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights Inc., said his client has standing because he represents "the ultimate form of government."
Doyle, he said, is a citizen with a fundamental right to vote on the constitutional amendment, and that vote should be made without same-sex marriage proponents having the unfair advantage of 2 1/2 years of nuptials having already taken place.
Another lawyer representing Doyle -- Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center of Ann 