A petty win for Romney
Having failed to prevail in the judicial arena on a profound question of equal rights, Governor Mitt Romney has been reduced to scoring a petty procedural victory over many same-sex couples planning to marry this month.
He won't let them choose who will officiate at their weddings.
For a small fee, governors routinely grant one-day waivers to those unlicensed to perform marriages in Massachusetts to preside at weddings of friends and family. But the Romney administration is refusing to rule on requests from same-sex couples -- some filed months ago -- until gay marriage actually becomes state law on May 17. For couples planning to wed in the next few weeks, the governor's 11th-hour decisions mean they must either bank on being approved or scramble for a back-up justice of the peace.
Since the application stipulates that a review takes four to six weeks, Debby Avitable and Michele Ford mailed their request the first week in March. Hearing nothing, Ford and Avitable of Pocasset asked their state representative, Matthew Patrick, to inquire on their behalf. "We were told more than once that since gay marriage is not legal until May 17, applications would not be reviewed until then," Patrick said yesterday. "We made several calls and got nowhere. What else can you deduce but that they are not going to cooperate?"
Joel Roberts, the staff member in the governor's office who handled the inquiries, refused yesterday to discuss his conversations on this issue. Shawn Feddeman, a spokeswoman for Romney, said it was all just a misunderstanding, "a little misinformation floating around." Applications that were received at least six weeks ago have been reviewed, she insisted; only release of the decisions is being delayed until next Monday.
But, why, if the governor has already ruled on an application, would he not let the couple know his decision as soon as possible? Surely, he realizes how stressful wedding planning can be. His son, Craig, just got married. Do we think that his bride, Brigham Young University classmate Mary Case, did not learn until five days before her wedding who would be officiating at the ceremony?
"It is just so small of him," said Ford, whose partner has asked her college roommate, a Michigan lawyer, to preside at the wedding on Cape Cod on May 22. In support of her application, Lore Rogers included letters of reference from a judge and a prosecutor in Michigan.
Avitable and Ford have vacationed every year with Rogers, her husband, and her son during their 13-year partnership, so she was the obvious choice to preside at their wedding. "We, like many of the couples in our social circle, are not willing to wait any longer to be married," said Ford. "We will not risk losing any of the rights, benefits, or responsibilities associated with marriage."
Their impatience is easy enough to understand in light of the obstacles opponents keep throwing in the path of gay marriage. There is the 1913 state law originally aimed at biracial couples being wielded against same-sex couples. There are the frivolous lawsuits filed in state and federal court to overturn the state Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized gay marriage. There is the even more outrageous effort to remove from the SJC those justices who voted last November for equal rights for same-sex couples.
"Given the current climate we feel it is more prudent to protect ourselves than to have the emotional comfort of having a loved one perform our ceremony," said Ford.
She and her partner will not have to make that choice, after all. Feddeman offered to check the status of their application for me and called back to say that Lore Rogers has been cleared to officiate at the Ford-Avitable nuptials.
If it was so easy for a heterosexual newspaper columnist to get that information, just why should the lesbian couple in question have to wait until Monday to be told the same thing?
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
