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In a May 21 letter to clerks in Provincetown, Springfield, Worcester and Somerville,
Reilly argued, “There is not the slightest evidence that this purpose
[preventing interracial marriages] actually motivated the Massachusetts Legislature,
which had repealed the commonwealth’s ban on interracial marriage in
1843,” adding that the law was created by the National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, a body of judges, professors, lawyers
and scholars who originally proposed the statute in 1912 to create equal statutes
from state to state and also to prohibit a variety of marriages.
Such prohibitions included, “‘Marriages with particeps criminis
[i.e., with an accomplice, a prohibition created by the divorce laws of some
states in cases of adultery], or with a minor without parental consent, or
within a specified time after entry of final decree in divorce, or between
a white and a colored person,’” Reilly wrote.
Reilly added that the term “intermarry” in Section 12 of Chapter
207 of Massachusetts law was not a reference to interracial marriages but rather
was “used in a much broader sense in statutes dating back to the 18th
century,” noting St. 1785, Chapter 69, “no man or woman shall intermarry
within specified degrees of relationship.”
To buttress his position, Reilly cited Associate Supreme Judicial Court Justice
John M. Greaney’s concurring opinion in Goodridge vs. the Department
of Health — the case that legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts — in
which Greaney wrote that the 1913 statute remains valid.
“The argument, made by some in the case, that legalization of same-sex
marriage in Massachusetts will be used by persons in other states as a tool
to obtain recognition of a marriage in their state that is otherwise unlawful,
is precluded by the provision of G.L. c. 207, 11, 12, and 13,” wrote
Justice Greaney, who voted with the narrow 4-3 majority in
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