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| Michele Granda, staff attorney at the Gay & Lesbian Advocates
& Defenders, said that no case has ever addressed the ‘reverse evasion’
statute and argued the landmark Massachusetts marriage decision provided ‘strong
legal and constitutional arguments’ that could override the archaic law.
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Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
30 Winter St., Suite 800
Boston, MA 02108
617-426-1350
www.glad.org
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOE CREA COMMENTS
 
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as set by Goodridge.
“Right now we can’t predict what will happen,” Granda said.
“But we think we know what should happen based on the broad principles
in the Goodridge case. They may look to this statute and look at it differently.
But there’s a lack of coordinated game plan. They are not all getting
together to decide how to do it.”
Baron also said that since the law has never been enforced, it could violate
the equal protection guarantee in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
if lawmakers decide to apply it strictly to gay couples.
“There’s a lot of case law out there that frowns upon the intentional
discriminatory enforcement of the law,” Baron said.
Cukier disagreed, however, saying, “Millions of laws are enforced discriminatorily.”
“If this law hasn’t been enforced against straight couples that
doesn’t necessarily mean that it is discriminatory if Massachusetts has
not performed any marriages of people who would be void in another state,”
Cukier said.
Baron added that U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the past that one state need
not make divorce available to out-of-state residents on the same basis that
it makes to other citizens.
Josh Friedes, advocacy director for the Massachusetts Freedom to Marry Coalition,
said that he firmly believes the state’s high court “has spoken
that gay and lesbian couples have to be treated equally and one cannot create
a second class system.”
“I think that the Goodridge proposition stands for the notion that we
cannot treat people differently based on immutable characteristics,” Friedes
said. The reverse evasion statute does that and that [Goodridge] is the highest
ruling right now.”
But Cukier nonetheless questioned whether any gay couples — wherever
they are from — will receive marriage licenses after May 17.
“That’s a million-dollar question, and I don’t know for sure
if we are even going to get licenses issued,” Cukier said. “My guess
is we are all going to be in court after May 17. The SJC asked the legislature
to — in that 180-day period — to re-write the marriage laws in order
to accommodate gay and lesbian couples. But the legislature has to change the
laws.”
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