Don't Touch Gay Marriages SF Says

Don't Touch Gay Marriages SF Says
by Mary Ellen Peterson
365Gay.com Newscenter
San Francisco Bureau



Posted: April 23, 2004 5:32 p.m. ET

(San Francisco, California) The city of San Francisco has told the state Supreme Court that it should leave intact the marriages of 4,000 same-sex couples even if it rules that Mayor Gavin Newsom exceeded his authority by issuing their marriage licenses.

Last week the court asked lawyers on all sides of the issue what it should do with the marriages of same-sex couples that performed before the court ordered them halted. (story) One of the possibilities the court asked the parties to consider was annulling them.

In a brief prepared by city lawyers San Francisco argues that it would be cruel and unfair to the couples to have their marriages terminated while the whole issue of gay marriage is before the courts.

"For those couples who have married, even while the validity of their marriages is uncertain ... they have both assumed obligations to each other and the state and third parties and invoked potentially important rights,'' such as inheritance, community property and child custody, Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart said..

In opposing briefs, Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office and the Alliance Defense Fund said the court should terminate the marriages because they were performed in violation of state law.

"The same-sex certificates and licenses issued by (the city) are invalid because only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California,'' the state's lawyers told the court. The brief said the court should direct the city to refund the $82 license fees.

The Alliance Defense Fund's brief argues that the marriages are already illegal and because the licenses states that "marriage of lesbian and gay couples may not be recognized as valid by any jurisdiction other than San Francisco" the money should not be returned.

In a similar case, where Oregon's Multnomah County issued marriage licenses to gay couples, a court this week ruled that the marriages should be registered. (story) Three-thousand gay and lesbian couples have been married in the county.

Once the issue of Newsome's actions in issuing the licenses is resolved it is expected the California Supreme Court will also hear a constitutional challenge to a state law restricting marriage to a man and a woman. That could be more than a year away.

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