BOSTON -- Gov. Mitt Romney turned up the heat on cities and towns Tuesday who are openly defying the residency requirements on marriage licenses for gay couples.
NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported that he wants copies of applications filled out in Provincetown, Somerville, Worcester and Springfield.
Questions of residency and how other states view Massachusetts law are becoming the new battleground. Three states, all bordering Massachusetts, said that they may recognize Massachusetts marriage licenses obtained by same-sex couples.
"Rhode Island would recognize any marriage validly performed in another state," Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch said.
In Connecticut, the attorney general wrote to Gov. Mitt Romney saying "same-sex marriages are not authorized in Connecticut. But that fact does not make them automatically void, because our state has no statute declaring same-sex marriages void."
New York's attorney general is taking a similar stance. But Tuesday, Romney, who in recent days has reversed his public relations strategy by staying out of the public limelight on the issue, said through his spokeswoman "under state law, out of state same-sex couples are prohibited from marrying in Massachusetts if they cannot legally marry in their home state. Therefore, same-sex couples from other states cannot come here to marry unless they intend to reside here."
In other words, the opinions of those attorneys general don't matter -- in Romney's view, Wu reported.
"The governor is entitled to his opinion on this matter. In a sense, it is kind of a tug of war at this point in which the rope really isn't in his hands. It's in the hands of the clerks, and it's in the hands of the officials in the other states," Lawyer's Weekly spokesman Paul Martinek said.
Martinek predicts, however, the enforceability of the 1913 law, on which Romney is basing his opinion, will be challenged in Massachusetts.
"Absolutely, we'll be filing some legal action on this," GLAD attorney Mary Bonauto said. "Massachusetts already marries non-residents, but suddenly the governor is inventing a new reason to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples when it comes to marriage."
Bonauto said GLAD knows of only one out of state couple denied a license Monday. That couple was turned away from Cambridge City Hall, but eventually was granted a license in Somerville. But she's confident there will be an appropriate test case when they're ready to go back to court.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, who has gone toe-to-toe with Romney on the gay marriage debate in the past, joined Romney by staying out of the public limelight on the legal dilemma.
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Janet Wu Reports On Marriages
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