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Photo Mary Ann Bragg
Provincetown Town Clerk Doug Johnstone |
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Photo Sue Harrison
The throng outside Provincetown Town Hall on May 17, 2004. |
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Gay marriage anniversary: mix of strategy, memory
By Mary Ann Bragg & Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
The town of Provincetown has recorded the most same-sex marriage licenses in Massachusetts, analyses of state records by the Boston Globe and the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders show.
Provincetown recorded 848 same-sex marriage licenses last year, Town Clerk Doug Johnstone said this week. And as of the end of April, 39 more have been recorded, for a total of 887. “It's not unusual,” Johnstone said of what has been a winter slow-down on marriage applications in Town Hall. “That's like a lot of things in Provincetown. But it's starting to increase as the weather gets nicer. … Five couples today filed their intentions.”
Cambridge has recorded the next highest number of gay marriage licenses, about two-thirds of Provincetown's total. Boston had the third highest count.
Johnstone and others in Town Hall had hoped to attain the 1,000th marriage application filing by May 17, to mark the one-year anniversary of legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts. On Tuesday he said the count was up to 955 (compared to the 887 licenses recorded).
The analysis by The Boston Globe and GLAD comes as that one-year anniversary hovers on the horizon, where politics, litigation, parades and other celebrations are converging.
This week three local Democrats are preparing to attend the state party convention in Lowell on Saturday, where explicit support of gay marriage will be considered for the state platform.
What has been a moribund legal case against gay marriage, brought by former Boston mayor and Vatican ambassador Ray Flynn against Town Clerk Johnstone and two other town clerks, is being revitalized.
A parade is planned in Provincetown to begin at noon on May 17. And those gay couples who married in the last year are reminiscing. “I think it's important just to be recognized as a valid entity,” North Truro resident Erin Golden said this week. She and her wife, Eileen Counihan, were one of 13 couples who married in Provincetown last May 17. The two women grew up together in Framingham and have been together for 26 years. “I just feel really happy to be from this state even though there are a lot of issues remaining,” Golden said.
The two women and their son, Jake, are now on a consolidated health insurance plan as a result of their marriage, and Golden said she and her wife have talked with a gay rights lawyer about tackling federal documents such as passports and tax returns, to gain status as a married couple. “We've filed an extension,” Golden said of her current federal tax liabilities. “In the back of my mind, I don't know if I'm ready. I'm contemplating pushing it to the next level.”
The litigation nationwide related to gay marriage, much of it spawned from the Massachusetts example, is complex. GLAD legal director Gary Buseck said on Tuesday that six states have active lawsuits pending that could lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage. The states are New Jersey, Washington, California, New York, Maryland and Connecticut.
Buseck said gay rights advocacy groups pursuing those lawsuits are beginning to see a difference in where the cases are receiving positive reception. “When we started out, when we had the Vermont [civil union] case, the Massachusetts case, we lost in all those cases in the trial court,” he said. “That's the reason why the cases came before a higher court. We have now won more of these trial court cases than lost.”
As for local litigation, the town of Provincetown, and Town Clerk Johnstone, are involved in a gay marriage lawsuit against state Attorney General Thomas Reilly. That lawsuit is in front of the state Supreme Judicial Court, with oral arguments to be made in the fall. If the case were decided in favor of Johnstone and the other 12 town clerk plaintiffs, then marriage applications could be accepted from any gay couples regardless of their in-state or out-of-state residencies.
(On Tuesday an out-of-state female couple lingered in the first floor hallway of Town Hall trying to figure out whether they were eligible to apply for a marriage license. The couple asked, after deciding that they didn't want to fabricate a Massachusetts residence on the application form, about commitment ceremonies as an alternative.)
The town is also a defendant, along with Somerville and Worcester, in a case brought by Flynn and Beverly businessman Thomas Shields in Suffolk Superior Court. The two organizations behind the Flynn and Shields lawsuit are the Law & Liberty Institute of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Arizona, both of which oppose gay marriage.
Attorney Philip Moran said last week that the Flynn lawsuit, filed last May, had gotten lost in the shuffle of the SJC case involving Reilly and that he has been instructed by a judge to work with GLAD to consolidate the cases.
And on Saturday three Provincetown Democrats - Sarah Peake, Gary Delius and Robert Vetrick - will gather at the annual state Democratic Party convention. Peake served on the party's platform committee and chaired a public hearing in Yarmouth in March where gay marriage was endorsed locally for the platform.
About 200-300 participants are expected, Delius said of his second convention. National party chair Howard Dean and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy are scheduled to speak. “We're the birthplace of liberal thinking, and I think other states are watching what's happening here very carefully,” Vetrick added. “The institution of marriage has not crumbled in any way, shape or form.”
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May 12th, 2005