I don’t know if people elsewhere in the nation are following the ongoing struggle over gay marriage here in Massachusetts in much detail now that May 17th has come and gone, but needless to say the battle continues. By an overwhelming margin which should be seen as a rebuke to Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Mass. Senate votes to end 1913 law the governor has been using to prevent out-of-state same sex partners from marrying in the state. It is not clear if the Mass. House will follow suit because of the opposition of conservative, oligarchic (and Catholic) House Speaker Thomas Finneran. The 1913 law, which was designed to prevent interracial marriages, makes it illegal for an out-of-state couple to marry in Mass. if there would be any impediments to their doing so in their home state. Originally, the State Attorney General ruled that Massachusetts would allow marriages between out-of-staters from ten other states which do not specifically define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, but apparently under intense pressure he has reversed himself and said that no gay couples from any of the other forty-nine states could marry here. Town clerks have been ordered to submit records of this week’s marriage license applications to the Governor’s office for scrutiny. The governor’s spokesman says Romney has no choice about the 1913 law because he cannot “pick and choose” which laws he enforces. A friend just sent me a clipping of this interesting rejoinder (which, by the way, is penned by the founder of the venerable Boston Computer Society) in the Boston Globe‘s letters section, which I have not yet been able to find online:
May 21, 2004
AGAIN Eric Fehrnstrom has defended Governor Romney’s overreaching interpretation of the 1913 law banning out of state couples from marrying here with his refrain that “The governor cannot pick and choose which laws to enforce” (“Senate votes to end 1913 law,” Page A1, May 20). It’s time someone called Fehrnstrom on this spurious argument. The fact is, the governor chooses which laws to enforce every day. Massachusetts has a panoply of so-called “blue laws” that have never been enforced in modern times by a Massachusetts governor. These include the law requiring citizens to get written permission from their doctor before taking a bath. The next time Fehrnstrom uses this argument someone should ask if Romney intends to begin enforcing the blue laws as well?
Jonathan Rotenberg, Boston
