Mountain GLBTQ Group

Willow,
What a great article. As I read it some of the posters on here just stood out in my mind. The descriptions from this author were so accurate. I won't name any particular ones, but if you follow these message boards you will know to whom I am refering. Thanks again for your support. It means everything!
PG

mtncachers,
I know, it is pretty discouraging that the INS rules do not apply. Just remember, the Constitution guarantees full faith and credit from one state to the other. The laws of one state must apply to all states. Eventually the federal government will catch up. It took 19 years for the Supreme Court to rule with the state of California on the
anti-miscegination laws that prevented people of different races from marrying. Right now it's tough for you, I know, and I truly feel for you. We don't always choose the nationality of the person we fall in love with. Stay strong and keep loving that special gal. True love will keep you together, no matter what. PG

Constitution guarantees full faith and credit from one state to the other. The laws of one state must apply to all states.

This is patently false. The federal law supercedes state law on issues that are not reserved to the states. Absent that federal jurisdiction, the states are under no burden to be consistent with one another. Elections are one example. The feds have no say and the states do whatever the hell they want. Some states have no sales tax or personal income taxes. Most do. Speed limits and legal age for drinking are other examples of many standards.

Ron - You are talking about a totally different issue. States DO recognize each other laws like marriages and divorces, driver licenses, school educations and so forth. Those issues are governed solely by states, not the feds.

So, I guess we are both sort of right. You are right in the areas that you describe.

The New York Times

May 18, 2008
Ideas & Trends
Thinking About California. Maybe Gonna Get Married.
By KIM SEVERSON

As soon as the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that gay men and lesbians had a constitutional right to marry, my partner and I started getting the calls: When would we head West to get hitched?

In the euphoric wake of the decision, it sure seemed like a great idea. Unlike Massachusetts, where a couple has to declare an intention to live in the state, California has no residency requirement. Plus, we have a lot of family there.

But do we really need to go to California?

Although our relationship isn’t legally sanctioned, we had a commitment ceremony with a great caterer and a flower girl and weeping parents.

And we have been carefully building a marriage inside our filing cabinet. There, we have a New York City domestic partnership certificate and the papers for the house and everything else we own together. We have wills, powers of attorney and medical directives. We also have the attorneys’ bills. The tab is close to $10,000.

The latest addition is the paperwork for our daughter. My partner gave birth to her four months ago, and this summer I hope to complete something called a second-parent adoption, which involves a $1,200 home visit from a social worker, fingerprints at the police department and more checks to the lawyer.

But it means we will both be on her birth certificate. Music lessons, college tuition, even — God forbid — child support. I’ll be on the hook for it all.

I called our accountant, Gregory Diggins, for advice on a California marriage. He wrote “Gay Finances in a Straight World” with his partner, Peter Berkery. He helps us decide who will claim our daughter as a dependent and how to best apply deductions for the mortgage payments, things married couples don’t worry about.

If we got married in California, could we file jointly in New York? And if so, would we still have to file separately to the Internal Revenue Service?

He was initially baffled but did a little research. Because the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as only available to a man and a woman, we could not file jointly, he told me. And we would have to use the same filing status on our New York returns.

I wondered, would we be treated as a married couple once we came back to New York? I called Susan Sommer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, a gay rights advocacy group. The good news, she told me, is that because of recent court decisions, a marriage between two women in California would be, at least technically, recognized in New York.

“New York has very strong principles of law that say if you enter into a valid marriage in another jurisdiction, that marriage will be respected with very narrow exceptions,” she said.

But she cautioned, “There haven’t been many situations where it has been tested in the courts.” So, she added, “A couple that is coming back married to New York is going to likely have to be pioneers on some of these frontiers.”

I have an infant at home and a full-time job. Do I have time to be a pioneer? Do I want to end up as a legal test case for trying to exercise the same rights that a married heterosexual person enjoys?

To help figure out what else I would be fighting for, I turned to “1,324 Reasons for Marriage Equality in New York State,” a publication of the Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation and the New York City Bar Association. The number refers to the legal rights and duties New York statutes and regulations confer on married individuals.

Aside from the big ones, like being able to make medical decisions and inherit each other’s property, the rights of married people in New York include being able to borrow money at better rates and, if in need of public assistance, to get more than single people. If I am in prison and she dies, I can go to her funeral. We can also commit each other to mental wards.

But getting married in California won’t mean that she will get my Social Security benefits, or that we won’t have to pay extra taxes for her to use my domestic partner health benefits. The federal government doesn’t really care what California or New York thinks about our marital status. Nor do most states; 41 prohibit same-sex marriage.

So why bother adding another piece of paper to the file, especially with talk of a referendum in California to overturn the court decision?

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national group Freedom to Marry, took me to task.“What you are doing is not just getting a piece of paper, you are getting married and you are as married as just about anybody on the planet,” he said. “That’s how we need to talk about it and understand it ourselves.”

It’s a patchwork application, he conceded, but it is the best we have. “Getting married in California doesn’t solve your day-to-day problems but that’s what civil rights looks like,” he said.

At the end of it all, I was exhausted. And although I started out not so interested in getting married in California, I ended up shopping for plane tickets.

Gemini: my point is that there is no coordination between states and only sometimes do they decide to honor another states laws. California accepts common law marriage only if it is recognized in the state where it was consumated. I beleive only one state fit. (New Jersey) but that may have changed. California recognizes no other States Bar (except New York?) and yet most if not all States recognize Californias Bar.

When trying to buy or sell a franchise, you have to comply with every jurisdiction impacted by a discussion or agreement. So a guy in California talking to a guy in Michigan about a franchise in New York would have to make filings in all three states and federally to avoid violating the various laws. Interstate law is a complex soup because there is no standardization or coordination in many areas.

In California try driving on an out of state license for more than 10 days from accepting employment or renting an apartment.
When you go to DMV, your vehicle will be required to comply with our smog standards and they will confiscate your out of state license plates and drivers license.

Ron - California always overreaches in regards to auto registrations, it's a money thing, they want it. Most out of state drivers rightly ignore DMV's request to reregister vehicles and licenses if they are visiting for a relative short time.