What Each of Us Sees in the Marriage Law

As I pointed out on Monday, Rhode Island gay activist Kate Monteiro was wrong to say that state Attorney General Patrick Lynch "has said clearly that what we've done for centuries in Rhode Island will continue - that valid legal marriages performed in other places are recognized here in Rhode Island." It's clear, from Lynch's statement on the matter, that he believes there isn't anything explicit on which he has the authority to opine, but that the answer will have to be "determined by statute, legal precedent, and common law."

Well, Providence Journal reporter Tom Mooney likes Monteiro's interpretation better than mine:

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch's opinion Monday that Rhode Island should honor legally obtained same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts signaled how the landmark ruling across the border promises to have ramifications here.

"Promises," no less. To the extent that Mooney's suggestion is true, it is evidence of nothing so much as that Representative Victor Moffitt was right to suggest that Lynch should have been clearer in confirming that "he can't interpret what's not there" in the law. For his part, Moffitt was the legislator who introduced the bill to confirm marriage's definition in Rhode Island as what everybody's always believed it to be.

Representative Edith Ajello, a sponsor of an opposing bill to expand marriage to couples of the same sex, made a comment with broader, almost conspiratorial, implications:

The more people see pictures and hear personal stories about couples who have been living in committed relationships for years finally being allowed to make their relationship legal, the more people will relax.

That's certainly true, particularly considering the degree to which the average citizen just wishes the issue would go away. In fact, homosexual activists are playing on the inclination to shake our collective heads and turn away in their marketing work. The Boston Globe reported, speaking of Susan Shepard and Marcia Hams, the first lesbian couple to receive a marriage license in Boston:

The couple had been carefully selected by gay advocacy groups, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and GLAD. Those advocates are eager to see media attention trained on the right kind of couples in the first hours of gay marriage: those with deep local roots, so their residency -- the focus of enormous controversy over gay marriage in the past few weeks -- is not in question.

The planning and control are not just in response to the residency requirement, of course. The strategy has been part of every decision, including the search for plaintiffs in Goodridge and other cases. It has also been an effort that many media sources, including the Providence Journal, have been suspiciously willing to assist. The Boston Herald found a (perhaps mild) example of the sorts of couples that are being so scrupulously avoided elsewhere:

PROVINCETOWN - The couple who expect to be the first to receive a marriage application here on this landmark day is from Minnesota, and despite legal obstacles the governor has tried to enforce, they plan to marry around noon.

I don't care about what the governor has to say,'' said Jonathan Yarbrough, 30, who will reaffirm his legal Canadian marriage to his partner of seven years, Cody Rogahn, 55. The couple called in January to reserve the top spot. ``What the governor is doing is shameful in itself.'' ...

Yarbrough, a part-time bartender who plans to wear leather pants, tuxedo shirt, and leather vest during the half-hour ceremony, has gotten hitched to Rogahn, a retired school superintendent, first in a civil commitment in Minnesota, then in Canada, and now in Massachusetts, the first U.S. state to recognize gay marriage.

But he says the concept of forever is "overrated'' and that he, as a bisexual, and Rogahn, who is gay, have chosen to enjoy an open marriage. "I think it's possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner, not in the polygamist sense,'' he said. "In our case, it is, we have, an open marriage.''

"Have chosen to enjoy an open marriage." That's in contrast, I suppose, to couples — such as my wife and myself — who "have chosen to submit themselves to the restrictions of monogamy."

One wonders whether Rep. Ajello believes the public will relax if the pictures are of leather-clad libertines with twenty-five year age gaps being openly defiant of the law. Granted, that's a big "if."