[Mb-hair] EDITORIAL The Mayor and Gay Marriage

[Michael Butler]

 The New York Times
February 8, 2005
EDITORIAL
The Mayor and Gay Marriage

The last thing Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs, with a re-election battle
looming, is a big controversy over gay marriage. But that is what a state
court judge handed him last week by ruling that gay marriage is legal in New
York City and pointing out the serious injustice of denying gay men and
women the right to marry. The mayor announced his intention to appeal, while
at the same time expressing his personal support for gay marriage. His
stance has brought considerable criticism from gay New Yorkers, from
political opponents and from people who simply say Mr. Bloomberg is trying
to have it both ways. Nevertheless, he made the right decision.

New York does not have a residency requirement for marriage, so if last
week's ruling had not been quickly appealed, gay couples from all over the
nation would have flocked to the city. But there is a genuine question about
what the law in New York State currently is. Although one city judge has now
ruled in favor of gay marriage, courts upstate have ruled the other way.
Rather than creating more legal confusion, Mr. Bloomberg wisely chose to
hold off granting licenses while pushing for an expedited hearing from the
state's highest court.

Gay couples should be free to marry, but marriage is an important enough
institution that all of society has an interest in defining it carefully.
One lower court judge - or one small-town mayor, as in the case of New
Paltz, N.Y., last year - cannot single-handedly rewrite a state's marriage
law. And gay couples should not be lured someplace to have weddings that
could turn out to have no legal standing.

Mr. Bloomberg could not, of course, have missed the political dangers on
both sides of the issue. By backing the local judge's ruling, he risked
alienating conservatives whose votes he may need next year, particularly if
he faces a primary challenge. If he appealed the ruling too
enthusiastically, he would offend gays and their supporters, whose votes
could prove pivotal in the general election.

It is easy to dismiss as insignificant the mayor's announcement that he
supports gay marriage - coming in tandem, as it did, with the appeal. But it
could carry weight in the State Legislature, which, ideally, will make the
decision to allow gay marriage, or in the courts. If the Court of Appeals
takes up the issue, a key legal question will be whether the state has a
legitimate reason for denying gay couples the freedom to marry. Having the
mayor of the state's largest city stand up as Mr. Bloomberg did should be
powerful evidence that it does not.

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