Mass. Justice Rejects Marriage Injunction

May 3, 2004

A petition to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to delay the start of same-sex marriages for two years was rejected Monday by a single justice.

The Catholic Action League had asked Justice Roderick Ireland to issue a stay on the ruling by the full court that it was a violation of the Massachusetts Constitution to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

Same-sex couples will legally be able to get marriage licenses beginning May 17, but the legislature is considering a constitutional ban on gay marriage. It has passed one session of the legislature but needs to be passed a second time in the next session before going to voters. The earliest it could be put on the ballot would be 2006.

C.J. Doyle, the executive director of the Catholic Action League told Justice Ireland there would be pandemonium if the weddings go ahead, only to be annulled in two years.

Legal chaos will be created by the issuance of same-sex 'marriage' licenses before the issue goes to the citizens for a vote in 2006, Doyle said in an eight-page petition filed with the court.

The court, he added, has a duty to avoid this inevitable conflict and confusion by simply staying the entry of its judgment pending the outcome of the amendment process.

But, Ireland disagreed, ruling that the League had no standing in the case to seek a delay.

Ireland went one step further in a veiled warning to other groups attempting to force the court to back away from its marriage ruling. He said that even if the League did have standing he would have denied the petition.

Why should same-sex couples, who have been determined to have the right to marry under the Massachusetts Constitution as it exists here and now, be required to wait to exercise that right simply because the petitioner and others hope … to be able to amend the Constitution and take away that right at some point in the future? Ireland said in his written ruling.

Justice Ireland was in the majority in the original same-sex marriage case.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who also has been thwarted in attempts to delay gay marriages is facing a challenge to his directive that municipal clerks must not allow same-sex couples from outside Massachusetts to marry. On the weekend Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino asked city lawyers to determine if the Governor has the power to issue the directive. If not, Boston is preparing to provide marriage licenses to anyone who applies.