{"id":2682,"date":"2008-06-04T08:03:05","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T08:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/06\/04\/gay-marraige-across-the-border\/"},"modified":"2008-06-04T08:03:05","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T08:03:05","slug":"gay-marraige-across-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/04\/gay-marraige-across-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay Marriage Across the Border"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recognition of marriages across political boundaries is a long standing, virtually global tradition .,.. perhaps one of the earliest non-refugee related mundane global practices … to cross borders to get married. The distinction between ceremony and recognition is well established. This does not always mean that marriages are so recognized, but more often than not, they are.\"i-3066e55500934b411d04404a24182b6c-gay_marriage_01.jpg\"Why are we talking about this? I’m expanding on a discussion happening here<\/a> regarding the recognition of marriages (in particular gay marriage), celebrated elsewhere, by New York State.\"i-83693f08e1d2bcff593cdacdc5c93a86-gay_marriage_02.jpg\"

Boston, May 17, 2004: Christian Schlesinger (left) and Russ Irwin smile at their daughter, 8-month-old Nina Porter, while they wait in line at City Hall to apply for a marriage license. Buster Coen, 8, a friend of the family, is at right. source<\/a> <\/em> <\/center><\/span>One must keep one’s head about these matters …. recognition of marriage is NOT a way for people to get away with something. Rather, it is the complete opposite, a conservative social convention. If my marriage was not recognized in Wisconsin (I live in Minnesota), then I could have a boy\/girlfriend in Wisconsin legally, as long as we only met there. People go to Las Vegas to get married and divorced with less state interference and paperwork. Israeli Jews traditionally traveled to Cyprus to get married outside of the oppressive mantle of rabbinical law, and so on. If a government entity could easily un-recognize a marriage in a non-trivial way, there would be countries or territories that do this. “What happens in Las Vegas Stays in Las Vegas. … Including any chance of bigamy charges….” Recognition of marriage from across a territory is the overwhelmingly common way.Here is some detail on the Martinez Case from Findlaw:<\/a><\/p>\n

Shortly after the wedding, Martinez applied to her employer, Monroe Community College (MCC), for spousal health benefits for Golden, a benefit clearly provided to opposite-sex spouses. MCC refused to extend benefits to Golden, and Martinez sued. However, the trial court dismissed the case, ruling that since the marriage was not valid in New York, Golden was not a “spouse” and thus was not entitled to any of the benefits accorded other, legal spouses.On appeal, Martinez made two claims. First, she argued that Golden is her legal spouse under New York law. Second, she argued that MCC’s denial of spousal benefits, which were automatically granted to opposite-sex spouses, constituted unlawful sexual orientation discrimination under New York law. She prevailed on both arguments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere in the court system, the Hernandez decision, an excellent example of conservative judges legislating from the bench, determined that “same-sex marriages cannot be legally celebrated<\/em> in New York.” (ibid)According to Joanna Grossman’s piece on Findlaw:<\/p>\n

What is the relevance of Hernandez to the question presented in Martinez? Absolutely none. The question whether a marriage can be legally celebrated in a jurisdiction is entirely distinct from the question whether the marriage should be given effect in the state….New York’s highest court has recognized … a common-law marriage even though the New York legislature had abolished common-law marriage by statute, a marriage between an uncle and a niece of the half blood, an underage marriage, and a “proxy marriage” (where only one party shows up to the ceremony), even though New York would not itself have permitted any of these marriages in the first instance.What set of rules led courts to give effect to the marriages at issue in these cases?The first rule of marriage recognition is the “place of celebration” rule – the idea that a marriage is valid everywhere if valid where celebrated. Most states apply some version of this rule to marriage recognition cases….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Currently, Gay Marriage is not allowed to happen in New York because the courts, not the legislature, has said so. It is possible for the legislature to specifically outlaw recognition<\/em> of gay marriages, but until that is done it is unlikely that any reasonable (likely higher) court decision would follow that route.The Martinez decision was addressed most recently in May:<\/p>\n

New York’s highest court handed same-sex marriage advocates a victory on Tuesday by refusing to hear an appeal on an appellate court’s groundbreaking ruling that recognized a same-sex couple’s Canadian marriage.By letting the earlier ruling stand, valid out-of-state same-sex marriages are recognized by the state of New York. Currently in the United States only Massachusetts offers same-sex couples the legal right to marry.The case, Martinez v. County of Monroe, was decided in February by an appellate court which unanimously affirmed the lesbian couple’s Canadian marriage. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) brought forth the case on behalf of Patricia Martinez, a word processing supervisor for Monroe Community College in Rochester since 1984.source<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"i-e364a17e626ac0f75129877ca222db68-gay_marriage_03.jpg\"

Boston, May 17, 2004: The Goodridges embrace their daughter, Annie, at City Hall while completing the marriage application process. source<\/a><\/em> <\/center><\/span>I find the fact that we are even having this discussion absolutely unbelievable.Gay people have the right, in fact, the responsibility,<\/a> to get married. Allowing and even encouraging gay marriage is not the first step towards the decline of civilization. It is one of the last steps in the formulation of civilization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recognition of marriages across political boundaries is a long standing, virtually global tradition .,.. perhaps one of the earliest non-refugee related mundane global practices … to cross borders to get married. The distinction between ceremony and recognition is well established. This does not always mean that marriages are so recognized, but more often than not, … Continue reading Gay Marriage Across the Border<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[230,33],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-Hg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}