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JOSHUA LYNSEN
Friday, August 03, 2007
Alexis Blizman has mixed feelings about the marriages that gay New Mexico residents can obtain in Massachusetts.
Blizman, executive director of Equality New Mexico, said she’s happy that Massachusetts decided last month to allow the unions.
“But it doesn’t really change much in New Mexico,” she said. “New Mexico couples have been going to Canada for years and getting married there.”
Blizman said last month’s decision, made by Massachusetts officials because New Mexico law does not explicitly ban same-sex marriage, does nothing new to empower gays in New Mexico when they return home.
“To some extent, the marriages will be respected,” she said, “and to others, they won’t be.”
Such legal uncertainties are familiar to gays in Rhode Island, the only other state whose gay residents can marry in Massachusetts.
Jenn Steinfeld, director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, said hundreds of gay couples from her state that married in Massachusetts are lingering in “legal limbo.”
An opinion penned earlier this year by Patrick Lynch, Rhode Island’s attorney general, failed to resolve the issue. Lynch urged Rhode Island to recognize the marriages, but could not force compliance.
Since then, Steinfeld said, state offices and businesses have “by and large” respected the out-of-state marriages. But exceptions remain.
Evan Wolfson, executive director at Freedom to Marry and author of “Why Marriage Matters,” said it will take time to resolve those discrepancies.
“The country is still figuring this out,” he said. “Over time, it will get better.”
‘A gay exception’
Wolfson said the problems that gay couples from New Mexico and Rhode Island face in getting their Massachusetts unions recognized are unusual.
He said Americans ordinarily are allowed to marry in any state and that marriage will be recognized in all other states.
“The right wing has carved a gay exception into that tradition of respect and stability,” Wolfson said. “New Mexico and Massachusetts are moving in the direction of treating committed same-sex couples the same as any other couple.”
But inequalities remain. Blizman said Equality New Mexico is urging couples to consider that before they fly to the Bay State to tie the knot.
The group has told residents that Massachusetts marriages “will be respected to varying degrees” at home and no benefits are assured.
State officials have done little to help. Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, said he will ask legislators to pass a domestic partnerships bill when they reconvene in January.
And unlike his counterpart in Rhode Island, New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has declined to offer state offices or businesses any guidance.
Wolfson said for these reasons, a Massachusetts marriage is not for the faint of heart in New Mexico.
“Couples need to expect a mix of respect, discrimination and uncertainty,” he said. “I think, unfortunately, for a period of time, because of the patchwork of discriminatory laws that gay Americans face, couples who can’t handle that degree of uncertainty probably should not be the first ones to get married.”
Politicians and others there who oppose gay marriage have used the New Mexico development to rally efforts that would define marriage as a heterosexual union.
Republican state Sen. William Sharer told the Associated Press that marriage is “about creating and raising the next generation in the form that’s best for society,” and that “there is no reason for same-sex marriage.”
“Sleep with whoever you want to sleep with,” he said, “but that does not constitute marriage.”
Blizman said Equality New Mexico is concerned the Massachusetts decision will spur Sharer — or another lawmaker — to offer a measure that would change the law and the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
She said such efforts were previously killed in committee or narrowly defeated in floor votes.
“My hope is the New Mexico state legislature will again recognize there’s no need to write discrimination into our laws.”
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