I've always liked politicians like Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Barney Frank, but they've been in office for years and we've seen little action. Now they look like tired old buffalos next to the handful of mavericks like Mayor Newsome, Mayor Daley and New Paltz, New York's mayor, Jason West, who boldly go where no one has gone before. Rock on!
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Gay Couples to Be Wed Today in New Paltz, Mayor Declares
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and THOMAS CRAMPTON
Published: February 27, 2004
The New York Times
The battle over gay marriages has moved to the upstate college village of New Paltz, where the mayor announced yesterday that several gay couples would be married there today.
The mayor, Jason West, said his office expected to marry at least six same-sex couples today, in what appeared to be the first such ceremonies in New York State.
Mr. West, who is 26 and was elected last year on the Green Party ticket, said that marriages for gay couples were a matter of equal rights. "I will simply be fulfilling my oath of office as mayor to solemnize a marriage and provide equal protection under the law for all citizens," he said by telephone yesterday.
The national debate over whether gay couples should have the right to marry has gained momentum recently, as San Francisco began to issue licenses and the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to prohibit gay marriage. In New York State, advocates and opponents of gay marriage interpret the law differently.
``The people who would forbid gays from marrying in this country are those who would have made Rosa Parks sit in the back of the bus.''
His plans thrust New Paltz -- home to 5,400 people and a state university campus 75 miles north of New York City -- into a national debate over whether same-sex couples are entitled to marry.
On Thursday, the state Health Department said that New York's domestic relations law does not allow marriage licenses for same-sex couples and that state courts have validated marriages only between a man and a woman.
``A municipal clerk who issues a marriage license outside these guidelines, and any person who solemnizes such a marriage, would be violating state law and subject to the penalties in law,'' the department said in a statement.
West said he reads the law differently.
``For a marriage to be legal in this state all that's required is for it to be properly solemnized by someone with authority to do so,'' he told the CNN cable network Friday. ``I'm fully able to do that.''
Several legal experts also disagreed with the Health Department statement, saying the law does not specifically ban such weddings. New York's attorney general has not issued a ruling on the question.
Vincent Bonventre, a professor at Albany Law School, said nothing in New York law explicitly prohibits same-sex weddings, but that the framers ``clearly were contemplating opposite-sex marriages.''
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, applauded the young mayor's move. ``It's equal rights for gay couples who should be entitled to equal treatment under the law and to marriage and the protection of the family that heterosexuals have,'' she said.
Discussion of gay marriage heated up this month after the top Massachusetts court ruled that anything less than full-fledged marriage for gays there would be unconstitutional. Since then, San Francisco officials have begun performing same-sex marriages and have challenged their state law barring such unions. Earlier this week, President Bush endorsed a movement to amend the Constitution to ban the practice.
A bill in the New York Legislature would ban same-sex marriages. Similar bills have died without action in the past. At least 34 states have enacted so-called defense of marriage laws.