New York City has announced that it will appeal a court ruling on Friday that says that homosexual marriages are legal in the eyes of the state. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appears to be straddling the fence on the issue, claiming he is personally in favor of gay marriage but he will appeal it anyway for fear of setting up the newly married couples for a disappointment if the ruling is reversed.
'Our legal staff, the corporation counsel, believes that the judge's ruling was incorrect,' Bloomberg told reporters.
He added that he did not want to see the marriages declared legal by a lower court and then annulled by a higher court like what happened in California and other states.
'Their great joy was snatched away from them, very tragically, and that shouldn't happen here,' Bloomberg said. 'If we didn't appeal this, we would have chaos in the city.'
At the same time, Bloomberg encouraged lobbyists to try to have the law changed so that gay couples could have their unions legally sanctioned by the State of New York.
Judge Doris Ling-Cohen's decision on Friday set an important legal precedent. It concluded that the right to marry the person of one's choice is a privacy right protected by the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution. She ruled that 'the plaintiffs and their children suffer serious burdens by being excluded from civil marriage' under New York's Domestic Relations Law.
The ruling also held that merely giving them 'domestic partner' status was not enough as the plaintiffs would face problems because they were not considered legally married.
The ruling cited the fact that 'plaintiffs couples may not own property by their entireties; file joint state income tax returns; obtain health insurance through a partner's coverage; obtain joint liability or homeowner's insurance; collect from a partner's pension benefits; have one partner of the two-women couples be the legal parent of the other partner's artificially inseminated child, without the expense of an adoption proceeding; invoke the spousal evidentiary privilege; recover damages for an injury to, or the wrongful death of, a partner; have the right to make important medical decisions for a partner in emergencies; inherit from a deceased partner's intestate estate; or determine a partner's funeral and burial arrangements.'
The decision drew a comparison to the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia which struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriages.
This case is most likely one of the beginning salvos in a war to define marriage and the rights and benefits gay couples are entitled to under the law. It appears neither side will be giving up any time soon.
