History > 2008 > USA > Gay rights (I)

Gabriel Blau, left, and Dylan Stein, both 28,

live in an apartment in the East Village

with their son, Elijah, 5 ½ months.

They plan to get married in Massachusetts.

Photograph: Nicole Bengiveno

The New York Times

New York Gay Couples

Head to Massachusetts With Marriage in Mind

NYT

2.8.2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/nyregion/02gay.html

New York Gay Couples

Head to Massachusetts

With Marriage in Mind

August 2, 2008
The New York Times
By TINA KELLEY

Gabriel Blau and Dylan Stein will be heading to Amherst, Mass., in a matter of weeks to complete a marriage ceremony they started two years ago.

At the couple’s Jewish wedding in a Hell’s Kitchen loft in 2006, they had a floral-embroidered chuppah, stomped on a glass in front of 175 friends and relatives, and were hoisted on chairs amid a hora-dancing throng. But one thing was missing: a marriage certificate.

This week, they called their rabbi to arrange another service, this one in Massachusetts, which on Thursday repealed a century-old law preventing out-of-state residents from marrying there if their home states would not recognize the union.

Because Gov. David A. Paterson directed New York State agencies in May to recognize gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions, Mr. Blau and Mr. Stein are among scores of couples expected to tie — or retie — the knot in coming months.

While some New Yorkers have flown across the country to marry in California since May, when that state became the nation’s second to approve same-sex marriage, gay-rights advocates expect many more to do the same in Massachusetts, since it is so much closer.

“We call it the Amtrak option, as opposed to the Jet Blue option,” said Cathy Renna, a communications consultant to gay and lesbian organizations.

Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, a leading gay-rights group, said, “I think this is an incredible opportunity for same-sex New York couples who are hungry for some of the 1,324 rights and responsibilities married couples receive to obtain them.”

Governor Paterson’s decision placed New York alongside Rhode Island and New Mexico in recognizing same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, according to a Boston-based advocacy group, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

A June memo from the Massachusetts Office of Housing and Economic Development estimated that 21,000 gay couples from New York might go there to marry if the state allowed. That is about 43 percent of the estimated 49,000 same-sex couples in New York. About 9,600 same-sex couples from Massachusetts married in the first three years after the state legalized such unions in 2004.

With Governor Paterson’s blessing, New Yorkers who get married in Massachusetts — or Canada or California — will be eligible for a host of benefits that they cannot receive now, according to Mr. Van Capelle of the Pride Agenda. Firefighters and police officers in particular have a lot to gain, because the state gives significant benefits to the spouses of emergency workers killed in the line of duty.

For Darcy Rickard, 39, of Albany, one of the main benefits of a marriage certificate will be a tax break. After her Massachusetts wedding, planned for October in Provincetown, her partner, Debbie Rodrigues, 44, will be eligible for coverage under Ms. Rickard’s health insurance, without having to pay state tax on the value of those benefits.

(Federal tax will have to be paid, since the federal government does not recognize gay marriages at all.)

And when they travel with Ms. Rickard’s 13-year-old daughter, they will no longer need to carry a ream of legal papers to prove their relationship at hospitals if one of them becomes ill or is injured in an accident. In addition, Ms. Rickard said, legally married partners have more rights in the case of a breakup.

“But really, the driving reason to get married is because we love each other,” she said. “When you’re committed, you want to show it.”

Ms. Rickard fretted that by not yet allowing same-sex marriages, New York is missing out.

“It’s money we’re going to spend in Massachusetts, not in New York,” she said of the wedding they are planning.

The New York City comptroller’s office estimated in a June 2007 report that allowing gay marriage could bring $142 million to the local economy in the first three years. The state would collect an additional $8 million in taxes and the city would collect an additional $7 million, and companies in New York would benefit from a wider pool of possible employees attracted by the change in marriage laws, the report projected.

A June analysis by the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, on the other hand, estimated that Massachusetts could add $111 million to the economy over three years by taking the step it did this week to allow out-of-state couples to marry there. The report also suggested that the move could result in 330 new jobs and increase state and local revenues by $5.1 million.

Figures about how many New York couples have traveled out of state to get married or enter into civil unions are nearly impossible to come by, advocates said.

Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side, expressed concern that New York might now have a caste system, with gay couples who can afford to go to Massachusetts or California enjoying more rights than those who cannot do so. But he also said that more married gay couples living in the state could help his efforts to pass a gay marriage law.

“Local officials will see that no harm comes to anyone for their constituents’ having access to a marriage license,” he said.

But a Christian group that sued Governor Paterson over his gay-marriage directive questioned whether the Massachusetts marriages would be valid in New York before resolution of the lawsuit, which is scheduled for a court hearing on Thursday.

“The people have not had a voice in this, either in Massachusetts or New York,” said Glen Lavy, senior counsel with the group, the Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz. “So this is simply short-circuiting the democratic process.”

Assemblyman O’Donnell is one of many gay-marriage advocates waiting to be able to marry in their own states.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a national advocacy group based in New York, said that many people he talked to wanted to be able to marry at home, “and I count myself among them.”

“I don’t think New Yorkers should have to go to Niagara Falls, Canada, to have what we should have in Niagara Falls, New York,” he said.

But Deborah and Mia Jacoby-Twigg of Highland Mills, N.Y., were tired of waiting. At 1:15 p.m. on Friday, they became the first out-of-state gay couple to marry in Provincetown, Mass., the clerk in charge told them.

Already on vacation on Cape Cod, they drove to the town of Orleans, a half-hour away, to get a waiver of the standard three-day waiting period for a marriage license and find a solemnizer, who conducted the service as their 3-year-old sons, Noah and Nate, ran around in the municipal auditorium.

“The solemnizer asked if we had rings, and I said I’d been wearing mine for 10 years and don’t think I can get it off,” said Deborah Jacoby-Twigg, 51.

For her, the marriage means the end of the perpetual confusion she faced when filling out official forms.

“I can check ‘married’ in New York, and that means a lot,” she said. “Our boys have two legally married moms, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

    New York Gay Couples Head to Massachusetts With Marriage in Mind, NYT, 2.8.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/nyregion/02gay.html

First same-sex couple

says 'I do' in San Francisco

16 June 2008
USA Today
By Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.

On Monday afternoon, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in San Francisco and among the first in the state.

"It was something you wanted to know, 'Is it really going to happen?' And now it's happened, and maybe it can continue to happen," Lyon said.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. He picked Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, for the front of the line in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.

Along with six other women, they founded a San Francisco social club for lesbians in 1955 called the Daughters of Bilitis. Under their leadership, it evolved into the nation's first lesbian advocacy organization. They have the FBI files to prove it.

Their ceremony Monday will, in fact, be a marriage do-over.

In February 2004, San Francisco's new mayor decided to challenge California's marriage laws by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His advisers and gay rights activists knew right away which couple would put the most compelling human face on the issue: Martin and Lyon.

Back then, the couple planned to celebrate their 51st anniversary as live-in lovers on Valentine's Day. Because of their work with the Daughters, they also were icons in the gay community.

"Four years ago, when they agreed to be married, it was in equal parts to support the mayor and to support the idea that lesbians and gay people formed committed relationships and should have those relationships respected," says Kate Kendell, a close friend and executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Lyon and Martin vividly recall the excitement of being secretly swept into the clerk's office, saying "I do" in front of a tiny group of city staff members and friends, and then being rushed out of the building. There were no corsages, no bottles of champagne. Afterward they went to lunch, just the two of them, at a restaurant run as a job training program for participants in a substance abuse program.

"Of course, nobody down there knew, so we were left to be by ourselves like we wanted to be," said Martin, the less gregarious of the two. "Then we came home."

"And watched TV," added Lyon.

The privacy was short-lived. Their wedding portrait, showing the couple cradling each other in pastel-colored pantsuits with their foreheads tenderly touching, drew worldwide attention.

Same-sex marriage would become legal in Massachusetts in another three months, but San Francisco's calculated act of civil disobedience drove the debate.

In the month that followed, more than 4,000 other couples followed Martin and Lyon down the aisle before a judge acting on petitions brought by gay marriage opponents halted the city's spree.

The state Supreme Court ultimately voided the unions, but the women were among the two dozen couples who served as plaintiffs in the lawsuits that led the same court last month to overturn California's ban on gay marriage.

They were having their morning coffee when Lyon heard the news on the radio. She rushed across the house to embrace Martin. Not long after, Newsom called to offer congratulations and to ask if they would be willing to be at the forefront yet again.

"Sure," was the answer they gave.

The couple, who live in the same San Francisco house they bought in 1956, do not get out much now. Martin needs a wheelchair to get around. Although they plan to briefly greet well-wishers at City Hall after the ceremony, they are having a private reception for friends and family.

"It's so endearing because they do seem excited and a little bit nervous," Kendell said. "It's like the classic feelings anyone has as their wedding day approaches."

Because a few other clerk's offices agreed to stay open until the court's decision becomes final at 5 p.m. PT, other couples planning late afternoon weddings may already have tied the knot before the mayor pronounces Lyon and Martin "spouses for life."

They don't mind. They know they already are.

"We get along well," Lyon said. "And we love each other."

"I love you, too," Martin said.

    First same-sex couple says 'I do' in San Francisco, UT, 16.6.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-16-gaymarriage_N.htm

How Governor

Set His Stance on Gay Rights

May 30, 2008
The New York Times
By JEREMY W. PETERS and DANNY HAKIM

When David A. Paterson was growing up and his parents would go out of town, he and his little brother would stay in Harlem with family friends they called Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald.

Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald, he said, were a gay couple, though in the 1960s few people described them that way. They helped young David with his spelling, and read to him and played cards with him.

“Apparently, my parents never thought we were in any danger,” the governor recalled on Thursday in an interview. “I was raised in a culture that understood the different ways that people conduct their lives. And I feel very proud of it.”

Mr. Paterson, who two months ago was unexpectedly elevated to be governor of New York, has accepted gay men and lesbians since early in life. From his first run for office, in 1985, he reached out to gays and lesbians, and in 1994, long before gay rights groups were broadly pushing for it, he said he supported same-sex marriage.

As he rose in politics, he became a go-between in the occasionally strained relationship between gay and black residents in his district and beyond, using his easygoing manner to broker disagreements and soothe hurt feelings.

On Thursday, the governor, who is still largely unknown to many New Yorkers, appealed to them to recognize what he called the basic common sense of allowing gay men and lesbians married elsewhere to gain the same rights here as heterosexual couples.

In doing so, he is stepping to the forefront of an issue that has often tripped up his party nationally, and he is going further than either of the two Democratic presidential candidates have been willing to do.

“People who live together for a long time would like to be married — as far as I’m concerned, I think it’s beautiful,” he said in a news conference called to discuss his directive to state agencies to revise their regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like California.

“I think it’s fine, regardless of the tenets of religion or the beliefs of some,” he added. “It’s something that the government should allow for people. It’s maybe misunderstood in this generation.”

But already on Thursday, there were signs of a backlash against his decision, with some conservative groups mulling whether to mount a legal challenge to the directive. Some Republican legislators said that Mr. Paterson is wading into an issue that should be settled by the Legislature, and likened it to the ill-fated attempt by his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants without seeking legislative support.

“It’s outrageous that the governor did what he did,” said Michael Long, chairman of the state’s Conservative Party. “He’s for same-sex marriage, that’s fine. I have no problem with that. To do this in the dark of night, through the back door, to begin the process of destroying the sanctity of marriage, is really wrong.”

It was shortly after Mr. Paterson was sworn in, on March 17, that his legal counsel, David Nocenti, approached him to discuss a February appellate court ruling in Rochester. In that case, the court said that because of New York’s longstanding practice of recognizing marriages from other jurisdictions, a community college in Monroe County must provide health benefits to the wife of a woman who was married in Canada.

Mr. Nocenti recommended that Mr. Paterson order all state agencies to bring their policies in line with that decision.

Mr. Paterson quickly agreed to do so, not only because the state risked legal exposure if it did not, but also because such a directive would be a strong statement of principle about an issue he cares about deeply. He met with his inner circle, and there was no dissent.

On May 14, Mr. Nocenti’s memo went out to the agencies. The governor’s plan called for not publicizing the directive until after June 30, when the agencies were asked to report back to Mr. Nocenti with the revisions necessary to comply with the court ruling. Once the governor approved those changes, he planned to announce them publicly. But Mr. Nocenti’s memo was reported on Wednesday night by The New York Times, and the governor described its contents at a dinner with gay advocates on May 17.

In the interview, Mr. Paterson said he believes deeply that gay men and lesbians today face the same kind of civil rights battle that black Americans faced. He acknowledged that this position put him at odds with some black leaders, who bristle at such comparisons.

“In many respects, people in our society, we only recognize our own struggles,” Mr. Paterson said. “I’ve wanted to be someone in the African-American community who recognizes the new civil rights struggle that is being undertaken by gay and lesbian and transgendered people.”

When Mr. Paterson became governor, gay activists cheered, saying they would have an ally in Albany even more committed than Mr. Spitzer. The Web site of The Advocate, a gay magazine, ran a story headlined, “Could Spitzer’s woes have a silver lining?” The story called Mr. Paterson “the best-case scenario for gays and lesbians in the state.”

Mr. Paterson introduced the State Senate’s first hate crimes bill in the 1980s and refused to support a compromise that did not include gay men and lesbians. When the Senate ultimately agreed to pass a hate crimes bill in 2000, it marked the first time the phrase “sexual orientation” appeared in New York State laws.

Mr. Paterson, then a senator, said: “Now I can die in peace,” adding, “If nothing else ever happens here, I feel that I can point to a contribution that I made.”

During his years as minority leader of the Senate, from 2002 to 2006, his warm relations with the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, helped pave the way for laws extending civil rights protections to gay men and lesbians, and coincided with a softening of Mr. Bruno’s views on gay rights.

“From the get-go, when I first introduced marriage, which was in, like, 2001, he put his name down right away as a sponsor,” said Senator Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat and the only openly gay member of the Senate. “The second I asked him if he wanted to be a sponsor, he said yes. When he was minority leader, he also fought for funding for groups and he’s been great on H.I.V./AIDS issues, as well. He has been 100 percent behind us.”

Some lawmakers said they particularly admired Mr. Paterson’s position on gay marriage because it would have been easy for him to let the issue rest once he became governor.

“I just think it shows the steel in his spine,” said Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner, a Democrat who represents the Upper East Side. “He knows he is now the governor of all people in New York State, gay and straight.”

Mr. Paterson said he does not see his support for gay marriage as an issue of political fortitude, but rather something more human and almost reflexive.

“All the time when I’d hear Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald and my parents talk, they were talking about the civil rights struggle,” Mr. Paterson said. “In those days, I knew I wanted to grow up and feel that I could change something.”

    How Governor Set His Stance on Gay Rights, NYT, 30.5.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/nyregion/30paterson.html

California Supreme Court

Overturns Gay Marriage Ban

May 16, 2008
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court’s 4-to-3 decision striking down state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman makes California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to play a role in the presidential campaign.

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

California already has a strong domestic partnership law that gives gay and lesbian couples nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage. The majority said that is not enough.

Given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of the concept of marriage, Chief Justice George wrote, the state cannot limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. The court left open the possibility that another terms could denote state-sanctioned unions so long as that term was used across the board.

The state’s ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman. The question before the court was whether those laws violate provisions of the state Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights.

Conservative groups have proposed a new initiative, this one to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. If it is allowed onto the ballot in November and approved by the voters, Thursday’s decision would be overridden.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, dissenting, said the majority had should have deferred to the state Legislature, which has in recent years increased legal protections for same-sex couples.

“But a bare majority of this court,” Justice Baxter wrote, “not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the people themselves.”

    California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban, NYT, 16.4.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/15cnd-marriage.html?hp

Gay Marriage

Gains Notice in State Court

March 6, 2008
The New York Times
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

On the way home from work in Rochester, Patricia Martinez stopped at a liquor store and bought a small bottle of Champagne to celebrate her marriage to another woman. The wedding took place in Canada nearly four years ago, but it wasn’t until Feb. 1 that a New York appellate court declared it valid in the state.

Last week in Manhattan, a State Supreme Court justice, ruling in a divorce proceeding, recognized the Canadian marriage of two New York City women, known publicly as Beth R. and Donna M. — or Mom and Mommy to the two young children they had been raising together.

Less than two years after New York’s highest court refused to legalize gay marriage, leaving it up to a divided Legislature, courts in Rochester and Manhattan, as well as state and local officials, have begun to carry out what some say is the de facto legalization of gay marriage — and gay divorce — in New York for the price of, say, a ticket to Toronto.

Advocates for same-sex marriage say the two court decisions last month granting reciprocity in New York to gay marriages in other jurisdictions simply underline what most people would consider common sense.

“If a heterosexual couple got married in France and then came here, they would be married,” said Jeffrey Wicks, a lawyer who represented Ms. Martinez in cooperation with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “We recognize foreign marriages, just the same as we recognize Mexican divorces.”

But opponents are not giving up so easily. Both rulings are being appealed, and the Alliance Defense Fund, a national organization opposed to same-sex marriage, has gone to court to challenge policy decisions by the Westchester County executive, the state comptroller and the state Civil Service Department granting benefits to gay couples married out of state. On Monday, a State Supreme Court justice in Albany upheld the Civil Service Department’s authority to recognize gay marriage, citing the Martinez decision as a precedent.

Recognition of same-sex marriage is a huge change that “should not be something that bypasses the democratic process,” said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

“The issue is percolating up through the court system, and ultimately it’s one that the Court of Appeals is going to have to resolve so there isn’t any inconsistency,” he said.

New York has become a testing ground for gay marriage reciprocity because most other states have pre-empted it by passing Defense of Marriage Acts, which explicitly prohibit gay marriage. Only one state, Massachusetts, allows gay marriage, though the Supreme Courts of Connecticut and California are considering the issue. In New Jersey, where the Legislature has approved civil unions, the attorney general’s office has said that same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts or in countries including Canada and the Netherlands should be called civil unions, not marriages, though both have the same rights and obligations.

Just two years ago, it seemed that gay marriage was at a dead end in New York. The state’s high court, the Court of Appeals, ruled in July 2006 that the state’s Constitution did not compel the recognition of same-sex marriage, and that it was up to the Legislature to change the traditional definition of marriage.

So far, that has not happened. A bill passed the Assembly 85 to 61 last June, but has been stalled in the Senate.

Advocates say that the patchwork of laws and decisions about gay marriage across the country has put gay couples and their families in a kind of legal limbo. “Marriage law aims at providing stability to couples, but when couples don’t know whether their marriage will be recognized from one place to another, there’s a loss,” said Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic at Columbia Law School.

The case of Beth R. vs. Donna M. in the State Supreme Court illustrated some of the legal gray areas for a couple who were raising two children together. While the ruling validated their marriage, it actually came in the midst of a divorce proceeding. The decision was reported by The New York Post last week.

The women, who have not made their full names public but who both work in the media, met in 1999 and moved in together in 2002, the court’s decision said. Donna M. became pregnant by artificial insemination in 2003, and just before the baby was due, the couple, who live in Manhattan, went to Toronto and took out a marriage license. But they postponed the wedding because of a death in the family.

They took out a second license and were married on Feb. 14, 2004, after the birth of the first child but before the birth of a second child, also by artificial insemination.

According to the judge’s decision, the plaintiff, Beth R., coached her partner through the births of both children, cut their umbilical cords and gave the children her last name. The couple sent out birth announcements. They taught the older girl to call her biological mother Mommy, and Beth R. was Mom. They chose a nanny, and went to preschool conferences. Donna M. named Beth R. as the children’s guardian, although they were never adopted.

But last April, Donna M., the biological mother, served an eviction notice on Beth R. A week later, Beth R. filed for divorce, so she could “legally end the marriage and someday move on if she wants,” said Susan Sommer, her lawyer and senior counsel for Lambda Legal, a gay rights legal group. Beth R. wanted “equitable distribution of marital property,” according to her divorce filing, and to ensure a continuing relationship with the children, including giving them financial support, her lawyer said.

The divorce action put the defendant, Donna M., in the peculiar position of arguing that their marriage was invalid and, therefore, there could be no divorce. Her lawyer, Bettina D. Hindin, said in an interview last week that her client, who is nearly 40, had had children because her biological clock was ticking and that she had been pressured into a marriage ceremony — a “shotgun type of situation” — which she thought of as just a symbolic commitment. “You can stand in front of a rabbi or a priest, and it’s not a marriage,” Ms. Hindin said. “It’s like staging a murder. You can make it look like a murder, but it’s not necessarily a murder.”

But the State Supreme Court Justice, Laura E. Drager, disagreed, saying that New York honors marriages performed out of state unless they are specifically prohibited by law, which gay marriage is not, or “abhorrent to public policy,” as in cases of incest or polygamy.

The presumption of reciprocity is so strong that even a marriage between an uncle and his niece, which would have been forbidden in New York, was recognized in New York after it was performed in Rhode Island, she wrote in her Feb. 25 ruling.

The lawyers said that having upheld the validity of the marriage, the judge will now move to traditional questions in a divorce like grounds, custody, visitation and financial support for the children, alimony and distribution of marital property.

Roberta A. Kaplan, who argued the case for gay marriage before the high court in 2006, said the Beth R. case showed that gay breakups could be just as bitter as straight ones, and needed the same legal protections. “It’s a very depressing way of looking at the world, but this stuff is most important when bad things happen — if there’s a death, if there’s a split,” Ms. Kaplan said.

In the Rochester case, the Canadian marriage between Ms. Martinez and Lisa Ann Golden was recognized by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Monroe County, which ordered that Ms. Martinez’s health benefits from her job as an administrator at a community college should be extended to her spouse. Monroe County argued that the marriage violated public policy as reflected in the 2006 Court of Appeals decision, and said it would appeal.

Justice Drager cited the Rochester case as a precedent, and Ms. Sommer said that the Monroe County appellate decision is binding on lower courts throughout New York until there is a contrary ruling from another appellate court. Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo filed a supporting brief in the Rochester case, saying that reciprocity for same-sex marriage “is the declared policy of the state.”

The trend in court, Ms. Sommer contended, “just helps give an air of inevitability” to same-sex marriage.

For her part, Ms. Martinez said that since the court decision, she and Ms. Golden had gone from feeling like they had checked their marriage at the border to feeling like newlyweds. “Now we feel that we are very married in New York,” she said.

    Gay Marriage Gains Notice in State Court, NYT, 6.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/nyregion/06gay.html

California's top court

ponders gay marriage

Tue Mar 4, 2008
7:36am EST
Reuters
By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Four years after San Francisco ignited passionate embraces and heated national debate by briefly allowing gay marriage, California's top court hears arguments on Tuesday as to whether matrimony should be limited to a man and a woman.

The hearing brings into focus the highest-profile U.S. fight over gay rights in recent years and the outcome could end up influencing legislation and litigation in other states.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom forced the issue by suddenly issuing gay marriage licenses in February 2004. More than 4,000 homosexual couples took him up on the offer, including comedian Rosie O'Donnell and her partner, until a lower court halted the process.

Later that year California's Supreme Court ruled that Newsom, mayor of a city long at the forefront of gay rights, had no authority to wed gays and voided the marriages.

The same court just across the street from City Hall where the gay marriages took place now decides the larger question whether California can legally bar same-sex matrimony.

Gay marriage supporters won an initial battle when a Superior Court judge ruled in their favor in 2005. The following year a state appeals court judge overruled that decision and backed existing state law.

Californians in 2000 approved a ballot measure defining marriage as the union of man and woman. But domestic partnership legislation as of 2005 gave registered gay couples many of the same privileges enjoyed by married couples.

Since 2005 California's legislature twice voted to allow gay marriages, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is liberal on many social issues, vetoed the bills, saying voters or the courts should decide the issue.

UNUSUAL SESSION

It now falls to the seven justices of the California Supreme Court to resolve the matter, and they have 90 days from the hearing to issue an opinion. With six of the judges appointed by Republican governors and one appointed by a Democrat, the panel is considered politically moderate.

The court has made a rare exception to its one-hour total limit on oral arguments and will hold a three-hour session.

"I can't recall any where there were three hours of arguments, I really can't," Cruz Reynoso told Reuters about his years as a California Supreme Court justice from 1982-87.

"Not often, but sometimes, oral arguments actually make a difference in difficult cases and I assume that the court considers this a difficult case."

More than half of U.S. states have passed constitutional amendments barring gay marriage, and President George W. Bush has proposed a U.S. Constitutional amendment.

State supreme courts in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont have ruled against limiting marriage to a man and a woman. Massachusetts responded by becoming the only U.S. state to allow gay marriage, while New Jersey and Vermont instead passed civil union laws similar to those in California.

Several other state supreme courts, including those in New York, Washington and Maryland, found that marriage can be limited to one man, one woman.
 

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Eric Walsh)

    California's top court ponders gay marriage, R, 4.3.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0336186420080304

New Year,

New Unions for Gay Couples

January 1, 2008
Filed at 9:10 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Dozens of gay and lesbian couples entered into civil unions in New Hampshire in the early moments of New Year's Day as a new state law legalized the partnerships after midnight.

Organizers said they checked in 37 couples for an outdoor ceremony on the plaza of the New Hampshire Statehouse -- the building where the law was adopted and signed in 2007. Participants bundled up against below-freezing temperatures.

''We've been together 20 years; we've been waiting for this moment for 20 years; finally the state will recognize us as we are,'' said Julie Bernier, who posed for photos on the Statehouse steps with partner Joan Andresen before the ceremony. Bernier and Andresen, who both work at Plymouth State University, never sought a commitment ceremony or other symbolic recognition of their relationship before Tuesday.

''I didn't believe in doing it until it meant something,'' Bernier said.

As ceremonies go, the outdoors event that began at 11 p.m. Monday was equal parts political rally, party and personal triumph.

''We really didn't believe that we'd be able to see this accomplished within one year but it has happened,'' state Rep. Jim Splaine, a sponsor of the civil unions bill, told the cheering crowd of about 200. ''One thing we have to keep in mind is that there is much more to do. We have to continue the journey to make sure that we have marriage equality, full marriage equality -- with the word marriage -- soon.''

New Hampshire's civil unions law -- enacted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature early last year and signed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch in May, gives same sex couples the same rights, responsibilities and obligations of marriage without calling the union a marriage. New Hampshire is the fourth state in the nation to allow civil unions.

''We are a citizen legislature and we legislated this into being,'' said state Rep. Gail Morrison, a Democrat and co-organizer of the event who entered into a civil union with her longtime partner.

John Davey and Mark Brodeur brought gold wedding bands to exchange during their ceremony. Together 10 years since meeting online, Davey, 34, and Brodeur, 48, held a commitment ceremony with friends several years ago, but became the first couple to seek a civil union license in their hometown of Stratham when they became available last month.

''That was just for to say that we loved each other, that we're committed,'' Davey said of the commitment ceremony. ''This is to show the world this is who we are, this is finally recognized in New Hampshire.''

There were no protesters at the Statehouse, though one man, Michael Hein, said he drove 180 miles from Augusta, Maine, so he could ''report to the people of Maine that this is going on next door.'' Hein also passed out statements from his group, The Christian Civic League of Maine, which denounces homosexuality.

''Without our vigilance in Maine, (civil unions are) something that could occur as soon as next year,'' Hein said.

After making brief group vows together, couples walked through an archway decorated with rainbow ribbons and a ''just married'' banner to meet officiants for individual ceremonies. As they walked through, fireworks from the city's New Year's celebration lit up the sky.

New Hampshire follows Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey in allowing civil unions. Massachusetts is the only state that allows marriage. New Hampshire estimates that as many as 3,500 to 4,000 civil unions will be performed this first year.
 

(This version CORRECTS title of group to 'Civic League,'

NOT 'Civil League.')

New Year, New Unions for Gay Couples, NYT, 1.1.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Civil-Unions.html