MCC-Net Alert: State Legislature Seeks to Repeal 1913 Marriage Residency Law--Contact Your State Representative ASAP to Vote No on Senate 800
July 16, 2008
On Tuesday, July 15, the Massachusetts Senate approved a bill, Senate 800, that
would export same-sex marriage to other states. The
Senate acted by voice vote, allowing the senators to avoid putting their individual
positions on record during this election year. The
bill is on a fast track, and may come up in the House as early as by the end of this week.
If passed by the House and signed into law, the legislation
would permit same-sex couples from states that do not recognize same-sex marriage to
travel to the Commonwealth for the sole purpose of obtaining a marriage license to take
back to their home state after their wedding. The
couples could then use their
The Roman Catholic Bishops in
During a brief floor “debate” within which no senator
spoke against the bill, Senator Dianne Wilkerson (D-Boston) argued that the current law,
passed in 1913 and requiring out-of-state applicants to prove that their marriage would be
recognized at home, was motivated by a desire to stop biracial couples from states where
biracial marriages were not allowed from getting married in the Commonwealth. She claimed that the 1913 law was proposed in
response to national media reports that a then-prominent black boxer, Jack Johnson, had
married a white woman. She called the 1913 law
“pernicious,” and other senators chimed in, asserting that the current law was
“contrived in shame” and “represents a segregationist past.”
The trouble is, this supposed history lesson was convincingly
refuted in a recent, unsuccessful court case brought by same-sex marriage advocates
challenging the original 1913 law. The
At the trial level, then-Attorney General Tom Reilly presented
a comprehensive and devastating critique of the very same historical claims that were
revived in the more recent Senate debate. Reilly
found, for example, that the original law was drafted before the controversy surrounding
Jack Johnson had erupted. His analysis showed
that
Reilly’s critique was so effective that the opponents of
the 1913 law dropped the question, never responding to this portion of his brief and
declining to raise the historical issue on appeal. The
trial court concluded that Reilly’s trial brief “set forth credible evidence
that the original goal of the drafters [of the 1913 law] was to prevent evasion of
existing divorce laws, not the limitation of interracial marriages.” None of this was mentioned in the July 15 Senate
debate.
The Attorney General’s trial brief and the trial court
ruling in the Whitacre case are available online at http://www.glad.org/marriage/Cote-Whitacre/PI_opposition.pdf
(see pages 72-78) and http://www.glad.org/marriage/Cote-Whitacre/coteball.pdf
(see pages 8-9). See also the Attorney General’s
appellate brief to the
Please contact your state representative as soon as possible by
phone or email. Here is a suggested message: “I am a constituent who resides at (give your
home address) and I urge Representative (his or her name) to vote ‘no’ against
Senate 800. A ‘no’ vote respects the
right and sovereignty of other states to determine their own laws without meddling by
The phone number for the State House switchboard is
617-722-2000 (ask to be forwarded to your representative) and email addresses and direct
phone numbers of House members can be found online at http://www.mass.gov/legis/memmenuh.htm. If you do not know who your state representative
is, go to the Secretary of State’s website at http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php
and enter your home address. Anyone with
further questions may call the Massachusetts Catholic Conference at 617-367-6060.
From time to time the Massachusetts Catholic
Conference staff will report by email on public policy events of concern to Catholics in
(v) 617-367-6060
(f) 617-367-2767
(e) staff@macathconf.org
(w) http://www.macathconf.org
Glory to God