« Again with the Kelo?! | Main | Law schools and institutional design »
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Married in Massachusetts, Moved to Connecticut
I'd like to follow up on this post, wherein I discussed the Connecticut Attorney General's determination that Connecticut will recognize Vermont and California civil unions, but not Massachusetts same sex marriages. His reasoning was that Connecticut's legislature clearly rejected same sex marriage, and therefore did not intend to recognize same sex marriages from other states. I suggested that an equally plausible interpretation and application of Connecticut law and legislative intent would be to convert Massachusetts same sex marriages to civil unions at the Connecticut border.
Let me explain why I think my interpretation is not only equally plausible, but indeed preferable. As I understand the Attorney General, Connecticut would allow a person married under Massachusetts law to move to Connecticut and "unionate" (whatever the proper verb is here) with someone else, since the Massachusetts same sex marriage has no legal implications in Connecticut.
I do not believe that this is consistent with the Connecticut legislature's intent. Although the legislature did reject same sex marriage, it also unequivocally chose to respect and recognize strong marriage-like bonds between people of the same sex. The most reasonable way to apply this "split the baby" approach to the "Married in Massachusetts, Moved to Connecticut" question would be to give Massachusetts marriages the same legal status as Vermont, California, and Connecticut civil unions.
Reminder: This discussion is not about the normative or constitutional questions surrounding same sex marriage. Those discussions are for another day.
Posted by Hillel Levin on September 22, 2005 at 09:45 AM in Hillel Levin | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c6a7953ef00d83554ced869e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Married in Massachusetts, Moved to Connecticut:
Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.