Recognizing Gay Marriage Through Gay Divorce
“In what appears to be the first ruling of its kind, a state Supreme Court judge in Broome County has allowed a same-sex Binghamton couple to divorce. New York doesn’t allow same-sex marriages, but state Justice Molly R. Fitzgerald allowed Lauren Wells-Weiss to divorce her partner, Shari Weiss. The two married Aug. 13, 2004, in Toronto, after a private religious ceremony before family and friends in Ithaca in 2001. The case is paradoxical, said both women’s attorneys, because in their opinion the judge recognized the lesbian couple was married, although New York state law doesn’t allow same-sex marriages.” [P&SB]
Issues like this will eventually help us get federal marriage rights. As individual states allow us to marry or form civil unions it will create administration problems in all states. The contradictions will eventually force the issue to the Supreme Court.
Unfortunatley our “leaders” (Obama included) will never have the balls to just give us the rights we deserve.
This is good.
Some people might want to keep the law on a leash and in a box, but there are always going to be cases like this in which they are forced to use it to deal with the real world and real people like us.
They can try to shut marriage equality out from the law, but every time they are forced to deal with it their foundation crumbles a bit more.
This is one of the reasons civil unions/DP are a big can of worms that no one should want to open legally but for bigotry. The reality is, and Obama is included in this assessment, most lawyers know that this is legally a messy concept to create all these new entities because marriage and domestic relationship laws cover so many legal questions. This is why including gays under the existing civil marriage laws is the easiest solution. It would avoid the legal nightmare. On the other hand, I am sure many family law attorneys are extremely happy with the mess since it means more business for them.
In Canada Same sex couple can get married with little or no residence factors but in order to divorce, these couple (or at least one) would have to have lived in Canada for one year. Interesting argument for the promotion of so called family values-easy to marry but not so easy to divorce. Same sex marriage actually strengthens family values-lol
NY state recognizes marriages performed elsewhere validly. There have been a number of cases already, and right now there’s even one pending before the highest NY court. All of the decisions concerning same-sex marriages obtained legally in other states have recognized same-sex marriage in NY. It’s just that NY doesn’t allow same-sex marriages conducted within its borders.
Hilariously, the only reason NY doesn’t allow same-sex marriages conducted wtihin its borders is that the law doesn’t allow the issuing of the licenses. And apparently unlike Iowa or Massachusetts, the NY Constitution has really weak equal protection clauses — if the law denied issuing licenses on almost any spurious grounds, it would be considered OK.
New York law recognizes marriage as a “contract between two people”, but only allows licenses to be issued to a “bride” and “groom”.
There are only four places in the law which need to be changed, specifically the usages of “bride”, “groom”, “husband” and “wife”.