A Massachusetts activist judge has taken it upon himself to expand Massachusetts legalization of gay Marriage beyond state borders. The following is from the Boston Globe:

A Superior Court judge ruled Friday that same-sex couples from Rhode Island have the right to marry in Massachusetts, finding that Rhode Island laws do not expressly prohibit gay marriage.

Wendy Becker and Mary Norton of Providence, R.I., argued that a 1913 law that forbids out-of-state residents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be permitted in their home state did not apply to them because Rhode Island does not specifically ban gay marriage.

[…]

After Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize gay marriage in 2004, couples from many other states began lining up to get marriage licenses here. But Gov. Mitt Romney directed municipal clerks not to give licenses to out-of-state couples, citing the 1913 law.
 

Eight out-of-state couples challenged the law. In March, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Massachusetts could use the 1913 law to bar gay couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont from marrying here. But the court said the law was unclear in New York and Rhode Island, and sent that part of the case back to a lower court for clarification.

Several questions come to mind, first and foremost being, with a lack of any Federal guidance, how do states, such as RI, who do not have specific provisions against Gay marriage recognize these couples? Also, if Road Island has no law against Gay marriage – why drag this through the court in Massachusetts, just get married in Road Island?

The answer to the first question would need a legal opinion, and I bet it will be complicated and doubtlessly lead to other lawsuits in other states with organizations like the ACLU and Lambda leading the charge.

The answer the second seems frightfully clear. The agenda here was much less about getting these two lesbians married, and much more about expanding the already gaping wound of Massachusetts same sex marriage provisions. This is the next logical step in forcing the national recognition of same sex marriage in providing a state where people can go to get married if they are in a state that is not among the 38 states specifically banning the practice.

The funny thing is, the ACLU knew this was coming. See the attached from the ACLU website:

If we don’t live in Massachusetts can we still get married there?

Maybe. Massachusetts has an old law suggesting that out of state couples who can’t marry in their home state can’t marry in Massachusetts either. Yet since Massachusetts’s highest court has ruled that it’s illegal to discriminate against same-sex couples who want to marry, this law may not be enforceable. This will take some time to resolve. The governor of Massachusetts, who has been very resistant to the court’s decision to stop excluding same-sex couples from marriage, has told clerks statewide that they cannot grant marriage licenses to out-of-state couples. Some clerks have resisted this order, and the governor’s office may end up declaring out-of-state couples’ licenses invalid. We’re monitoring the situation closely as it continues to unfold. Check back here for updates.

That was almost prophetic – and who says the ACLU doesn’t have an agenda? The ACLU has been one of the most vehement supporters of same sex marriage; it only seems odd that they where mostly silent on this current ruling.

The next logical step, now that a shoehorn has been pried into the 1913 law in Massachusetts that would have stopped out of state, gay couples from getting married in the state, is to widen the decision to include any couple regardless of home state or that states stance on same sex marriage.

Then I would not want to live in Massachusetts as they provide a safe haven for same sex marriage across all 50 states.

The next step would be to do similar things in other states that may be sympathetic to same sex marriage.  From there it is anyone’s guess.

Regardless of the all of this, I still do not believe the Federal Marriage Amendment is the right way to go. Marriage laws, impacting only that state, belong in the state and should represent the position of the majority. 

With that said, we cannot let states make decisions which so blatantly impact other states. Massachusetts have effectively fostered a default position of supporting same sex marriage on the 11 other states, like Road Island, which have no law restricting it.

Perhaps this is where the Federal Government, it its traditional roll as mediator between the states, comes in.

Click here to find out where you state stands on Gay Marriage.

Click here for a history of the Gay Marriage battle in Massachusetts.