Stepping into the gay marriage fight for the first time since it erupted in New York a week ago, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer warned yesterday that state law does not permit same-sex unions and cautioned that ceremonies already performed there may be illegal.
Meanwhile, a new front in the battle over same-sex marriage opened yesterday in Portland, Ore., where county officials issued dozens of licenses to gay couples after deciding that state law allowed the unions.
Mayors and county officials in four states have allowed gay marriages, including thousands in San Francisco, which started the wedding march Feb. 12. The marriages have met with calls for a constitutional amendment banning the unions.
In Portland, more than 150 gay couples lined up to get marriage licenses after Multnomah County officials decided it would be unconstitutional to deny them.
In his advisory opinion in New York, Spitzer discouraged officials from presiding over gay marriages, challenging a movement that began in California but is now engulfing New York.
More dissension
Far from resolving the debate, the opinion immediately fueled further dissension and defiance and quickened a likely collision with the courts.
Despite Spitzer's recommendations, Mayor Jason West of New Paltz, who is facing criminal charges for officiating at 25 ceremonies last week, vowed to continue this weekend, and yet another mayor, John Shields of Nyack, said he, too, would perform same-sex marriages beginning today.
"I was hoping that Eliot Spitzer would be more courageous," said Shields, a Democrat who participated in a state Senate hearing on same-sex marriages in Albany yesterday. "If you are personally in favor of it then you should be helping to move this issue forward."
Though Spitzer said "I personally support" gays and lesbians in "their desire to marry," he concluded that references to "husband," "wife," "groom" and "bride" in New York's 108-year-old Domestic Relations Law made it clear that the Legislature never intended marriage to apply to members of the same sex.
A day before a group of gays and lesbians were scheduled to demand marriage licenses from the New York City clerk, Spitzer's conclusions were also echoed by the city's top lawyer.
"Those are not proper marriages, are not legal marriages pursuant to the statute," Spitzer said at a Manhattan news conference, conceding that the constitutionality of the unions will likely be determined in court.
