Same-sex couples heading to Bay State to marry
NEW YORK -- Some couples will hop on the $10 Chinatown bus from Manhattan to Boston this morning to get marriage licenses. Others have already flown to Logan International Airport or have driven to Provincetown.
Despite Governor Mitt Romney's threats of legal action against clerks who issue marriage licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples, dozens of gay couples from the Empire State plan to marry in Massachusetts. Many aren't sure what to expect once they get there, or after they wed.
"I'm excited, but just a little nervous," said Santiago Arana, 35, of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. He plans to marry his partner, Tom Wolfe, a 33-year-old New York police officer, in Provincetown. "It's up to the day that things are changing, they are still fighting. We don't know what to expect when we arrive."
Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sent Romney last week a copy of an opinion he issued in March, indicating that while gay marriage is not legal in the state of New York, same-sex marriages performed in other states would be recognized here. "In general, New York common law requires recognizing as valid a marriage, or its legal equivalent, if it was validly executed in another state," Spitzer wrote.
In Pennsylvania, which has a Defense of Marriage Act, 12 legislators are suing two gay men who sought marriage licenses in Bucks County. The two men, Robert Seneca and Stephen Stahl, have been waiting to see how gay marriages play out in Massachusetts tomorrow before they file their own suit challenging a clerk's decision to deny them a license. The legislators' suit seeks to affirm the state DOMA.
The legal maneuvering didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the couples heading to Massachusetts.
"It's going to be amazing," said Vincent Maniscalco, 42, who flew into Boston yesterday with his partner, Edward DeBonis, 51. The Greenwich Village couple, whose struggle to wed as Catholics is featured in a documentary film shown this weekend at the Boston Gay & Lesbian Film/Video Festival, will stay in Cambridge and file for a license tomorrow in Somerville. "We have been following the Massachusetts court case while it was going through the courts, and when they won, we were very excited and were planning to go but really didn't make the final plans until a few days ago."
Romney, citing a 1913 law barring people from outside Massachusetts from marrying in the state, has warned town and city clerks against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they don't live in Massachusetts or plan to move there. Some communities, Somerville and Provincetown among them, say they will marry out-of-state couples anyway.
All couples have to wait three days after filing papers before their license can be issued.
Brendan Fay, the founder of the Civil Marriage Trail, an organization that helped same-sex couples marry in Canada, will accompany two New York couples on a discount bus ride to the Boston area. The group will meet in Cambridge this evening for dinner and attend a church service at Christ Church in Harvard Square. Fay, who married his partner in Canada, said the couples will seek a license in Somerville tomorrow.
"As soon as the possibility of getting married in Massachusetts emerged, we began getting inquiries and calls across and throughout New York," Fay said. "I think for New Yorkers, being able to marry in their own country is more meaningful, so May 17 is the beginning of the end of discrimination right here at home. This is the moment everybody has been waiting for."
Ron Schlittler, acting executive director of Parents Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, agreed but cautioned the public about overanalyzing the historic day.
"It's good that we have finally come to this day to celebrate, but we also know that in many ways marriage for same-sex couples is still an incremental process, because for years to come we will be sorting out how this gets played out state by state," Schlittler said. "And also, what is it going to mean for federal recognition for these marriages?"
Schlittler said some couples who do not want to feel like they are test cases are waiting to see what happens in the Bay State or opting to marry in Canada, where he said there is a different level of recognition.
Others from some of the 38 states that have Defense of Marriage Acts said they decided against coming to Massachusetts to marry after talking to lawyers.
In Brooklyn, Deborah Gar Reichman and her partner, Shelley Cournoy, plan to travel to Massachusetts to file for a marriage license. They are not sure which community they will travel to and whether their marriage will be legal in New York. "We are planning to go," said Reichman, "but there are still a lot of issues that change every day."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
