SJC rejects church group's bid to delay gay marriage law

The state's highest court yesterday rejected a long-shot request by a Roman Catholic group to put on hold the landmark decision legalizing gay marriage until at least November 2006, when a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex weddings may go before Massachusetts voters.

The Supreme Judicial Court rejected an attempt by C. Joseph Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, to shelve the court's 4-to-3 ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2003. Lawyers for the group had argued that marriages of same-sex couples would make it harder for supporters of the ban to change the state constitution.

But in a unanimous two-page decision, the full court concluded last year that Justice Roderick L. Ireland had correctly denied the league's petition for an immediate stay of the ruling.

The ruling yesterday ended a legal challenge to the SJC's legalization of gay marriage, according to lawyers for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, known as GLAD, a legal-rights group that brought the original lawsuit on behalf of seven same-sex couples who had sought the right to marry.

The decision came as little surprise. Lawyers for both the Catholic Action League and GLAD had expressed doubts that the court would stay its ruling. Michele Granda, a staff lawyer for GLAD, was so confident that she did not make an oral argument May 2.

''The court has affirmed our view that no harm has befallen anyone in the Commonwealth as the result of same-sex couples marrying in the state," Granda said in a statement yesterday. ''Goodridge is the law of the Commonwealth, and nothing has happened to change that."

Chester Darling, who represented the Catholic Action League before the SJC, denounced the ruling. He said justices have made it harder for supporters of the ban to persuade Massachusetts voters to outlaw gay marriage.